Mahabharata Story
by Nenena
Summary: A science fiction reimagining of the Mahabharata.
1. Prologue: Worlds that Were

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti and Steelehearts for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

PROLOGUE: WORLDS THAT WERE

* * *

The king left behind three sons.

"We're cursed," proclaimed the middle son, Pandu, with all of the solemnity that his slight ten-year-old self could muster. "Grandpa was eaten by a fish, too."

"Grandpa," corrected the eldest son, Dhritarashtra, "drowned. He fell off the yacht, had his arms and legs bitten off by a carnivorous purplegill, and then he drowned."

"I'm never going on a boat again," Pandu said resolutely. Then he took a deep, shuddering breath, and covered his face with his sleeve for a moment. When he felt that his voice had steadied enough, he continued, "I'm never going to the beach again, either."

"Don't be stupid," Dhritarashtra said, but he put his hand on his younger brother's shoulder anyway. Dhritarashtra was three years older than his brother. This meant, as his late father had often told him, that he was responsible for making sure that his younger brother's natural inclination toward stupidity never got the better of him - at least not in public. That was what big brothers were for.

Vidura, the youngest, who had said nothing for a very long time, suddenly said, "I hope Papa is reborn as someone who doesn't taste good to fish."

Pandu nodded solemnly, in agreement with the wisdom of this utterance.

"I'm never going to hunt fish again," Pandu declared, even though his father had already introduced him to the singular pleasure of harpooning the toothy creatures on their many previous boating vacations. "I'm never going to _eat_ fish again."

Dhritarashtra rolled his eyes. "Then what are you going to eat?"

"I dunno." Pandu fell silent for a moment. Dhritarashtra couldn't tell whether Pandu's silence resulted from the effort of thinking very hard, or from the effort of trying very hard to be a man and to not blubber in public. "Seaweed."

"You'll get sick," Vidura said, disapprovingly, in a prissy voice that Dhritarashtra often thought was only a taste of how insufferable his youngest brother was sure to become as he grew into adulthood. "And your skin will turn green."

"Oh, oh, there you are!"

All three brothers turned at once. "Uncle Bhisma," Dhritarashtra said, since as the oldest, he was expected to speak for all three of them.

Bhisma, who had graying hair and wrinkled eyes and who, as everybody always commented, looked absolutely nothing like his recently deceased brother, swept toward the three princes. "Pandu, young man, where is your tie?!"

"It looked stupid," Pandu mumbled.

"This is not the time for-- Vidura, you can't wear those socks with---! Pandu, don't you dare make that face at me, not today, not today of all days--"

"What's wrong with my socks?" Vidura questioned, with genuine innocence.

"They're purple."

"Papa loved purple."

"Vidura, princes wear white to a funeral."

"Papa wore purple to Mama's funeral--"

During all of this, Dhritarashtra squeezed Pandu's shoulder gently, and said one word: "Tie."

"Right," Pandu mumbled, reluctantly. Dhritarashtra heard his fingers fumbling in the pockets of his dress trousers, digging out his white necktie. Dhritarashtra figured that Pandu had kept the tie in his pocket because he had known at some point he would have to put it on anyway.

Bhisma then turned toward them both and gestured sharply enough that his hand actually caused the air around it to whistle with urgency. "Come on," he said. "We're late." Then he turned on his heel and marched away, clearly expecting his nephews to follow him.

"Okay," Pandu said, taking a deep breath. "We can do this."

Vidura went first, then Pandu, and then Dhritarashtra, with his hand on Pandu's shoulder. Pandu led his eldest brother in this manner, anywhere and everywhere they went. This was because Dhritarashtra had been born blind.

* * *

I.

Once there was a great vast emptiness of dark space speckled throughout with some very old planets and some even older stars. There were humans on many of these planets. Nobody could say how they got to be there or where they had come from, but they were there. Humans had wondrous technology and fantastic metal ships that allowed them to travel across the nothingness between planets. And yet, very few humans ever did so, because there was simply too much to occupy oneself with on one's own planet. Likewise, space travel itself was often considered quite dangerous. Everybody knew that gods and demons lurked in the empty dark matter between stars.

Now, as the old people often said with a sort of self-righteous fatalism, the stars were dying out, and with them were crumbling the civilizations on the tiny planets orbiting them. Worlds were growing isolated. Ships were rarely seen streaking across the skies. Languages were dying. Scholars were losing the most ancients texts of their own civilizations, or forgetting how to translate the slightly less ancient. New blood came to none of the planets, and the old blood grew thicker and slower with each generation. Darkness was already encroaching upon the outermost known worlds. There were whispered rumors of stars dying out, or even going supernova - although the treacherously slow speeds of light would not reveal the truths of these rumors, to either the naked eye or the most sophisticated telescope, for centuries yet. In the meantime, few were brave or foolish enough to board a starship and confirm for themselves the fate of these distant and, in the minds of many, unimportant worlds. Meanwhile, the humans on each planet had their morning newspapers, their workplace banter, their families, their children, their auto insurance bills. This was happiness, to many.

And the very fact that in the face of all of the crumbling decline and growing darkness there were still planets teeming with life and creativity and civilization at all, was quite extraordinary.

One of these many marvelous planets was called Kuru by the people who lived on it, a small ball of rock and ocean orbiting a yellow star edging toward the center of a spiraling galaxy. Kuru was, as any of its natives would gladly tell you, home to the oldest and most advanced civilization in the known universe. (The fact that the inhabitants of Panchala, a planet in a nearby system, often made this exact same claim, was rarely acknowledged with anything more than a derisive snort by any decent self-respecting citizen of Kuru.) The people of Kuru had colonized their own moon so far back in their own history that they had lost all record of when and how it had exactly occurred. Kuru's three small continents offered both soaring mountains and lush green valleys; windswept desserts of both sun-baked sand and freezing ice; rainforests and pine forests and rolling meadows of wildflowers. The people of Kuru were usually quite proud of their forests and flowers, and would often bring up these lovely natural assets in the face of detractors (often Panchalans) who liked to point out the honest truth - that Kuru was more ocean than land, and that eighty percent of the planet's surface reeked of salt water and the unpleasant, toothy things which had evolved in Kuru's sometimes too-fertile waters.

Salt-stink and man-eating fish aside, the people of Kuru did have one thing that they were perfectly justified in boasting about - Hastinapura, a capital city so lovely that even Panchalans were not ashamed to write poems about her soaring buildings that gracefully hugged breathtaking seaside cliffs, her warm subtropical climate and sweet-smelling ocean breezes, sights and sounds and smells. Hastinapura's art museums and theater houses were the envy of not just the rest of Kuru, but many other planets as well; at the mention of Hastinapura's libraries, academics from near and far were known to start salivating; Hastinapura's annual boat, balloon, and speedbike racing events were attended even by the rare visitor from worlds in other quadrants of the galaxy.

And above the boat races and the automobile speedway, above the theaters and the libraries, above the universities and the science laboratories, above all of Hastinapura, on the highest cliff overlooking both the city and the warm yet treacherous and stormy ocean that it bordered, sat a palace so magnificent and so ancient that many believed it had been there even before the cities had appeared on Kuru's moon. And from this splendid palace, since time immemorial, a single king had ruled over all of Kuru.

This story begins with Hastinapura's king. Specifically, it begins with the death of the king.

* * *

II.

When Dhritarashtra had been born, the priests within the palace had all unanimously agreed that the blind child could not succeed to his father's throne. "It is too inauspicious," one had said. "It is a sign from the gods that his baby must not be a king," another had said.

Bhisma, who had taught himself to read the raised, bumpy system of writing that the blind used so that he might, in turn, teach it to his nephew, had always told Dhritarashtra, "The Lord may not have given you sight, but he gave you many other gifts that others will never have."

Dhritarashtra thought of these things as he sat through his father's funeral, Vidura's head on his shoulder, Pandu's rough hand clutched in his. It was better to think of these things than to think of his own father being eaten alive by a redfinned lacegill.

Dhritarashtra and his brothers sat at the very front of a crowd of thousands. Dhritarashtra could not see them, but he could hear the electronic hum of broadcast camera and tastefully hidden microphones all around._This is being broadcast on media channels_, he thought numbly. All the more reason not to cry.

Dhritarashtra could feel an occasional hot flush appearing and then receding from Vidura's cheeks as they rested against his shoulder. But so far, he had heard no sniffling, which meant that for the time being, Vidura was keeping his composure.

_Purple socks_, Dhritarashtra thought. The thought cheered him up, because he knew that his father would have appreciated purple socks on a day like today. On the other hand, Dhritarashtra was still mildly dismayed to think that he did not really understand what purple was, or why in the Lord's name his uncle Bhisma would find something like a color so very offensive.

* * *

III.

When it was over, Bhisma pulled the three princes aside. Then he knelt down until he was at eye level with Pandu, and said very quietly, "The priests would like to crown you tomorrow. We'll wait until next week to have a public ceremony." Pandu gulped, but Bhisma patted him on the shoulder and said cheerfully, "It will be a splendid coronation. Just you wait."

"I'll--" Pandu choked for a moment, then quickly composed himself. "I'll have to wear a stupid hat, won't I?"

"Oh, yes. And ridiculous-looking robes. And you'll have to wave around the most ludicrous-looking scepter we have among the royal collection. And the crown will likely be far too large for your head, but..." Bhisma shrugged.

Pandu laughed, weakly.

Bhisma hugged him once, quickly, then straightened up and turned away from the princes. "I'll fetch you tomorrow," he said. Then he left, and they were alone.

A moment later, Pandu suddenly grabbed Dhritarashtra in a fierce hug and, burying his face in his older brother's chest, mumbled "It should be your crown."

"Don't say stupid things like that," Dhritarashtra snapped, rather more testily than he would have liked.

"I AM stupid. You've always been better at--"

Dhritarashtra pushed Pandu away from himself, angrily. "You're the _king_ now, you can't throw baby tantrums anymore--" When Pandu sniffled, Dhritarashtra threw his arms up in the air and said, exasperated, "Oh, come _on_, it's not like you have to do or decide anything important, Uncle Bhisma will take care of everything, you just have to sit there and wear a damn crown---!"

"Oh," Vidura gasped, very small and quiet.

"What?" Dhritarashtra snapped.

"I've never heard you say a bad word before," Vidura said, honestly.

"You're mad at me," Pandu said. He sounded very hurt. "I knew it."

Dhritarashtra sighed. "Why would I be mad at you?"

"Because... Because you're the oldest and because I've never been as good as you at studies or homework or anything and because Uncle Bhisma has always liked you better and because even Uncle Bhisma thinks that you're smarter than me and because I get to be king and you don't."

For a long, long moment, Dhritarashtra said nothing. Then he said, "That's not true."

Pandu grew very quiet. Dhritarashtra could feel his younger brother's wide, teary eyes on him, searching, seeking, squinting, probing carefully. Finally, Pandu said, very shakily, "Swear honest?"

"Swear honest. That's not true," Dhritarashtra lied.

"Okay," Pandu said, his voice wavering with teary relief.

" I just want to go to bed," Dhritarashtra said. He reached for Pandu's shoulder. "Let's go, all right?"

"Right," Pandu agreed, content to have cleared the air of the matter. He started back in the right direction, Dhritarashtra following, Vidura trailing behind them.

Dhritarashtra could feel Vidura's eyes staring at his back as the three of them moved silently through the palace. Dhritarashtra knew that Vidura was as observant - and as skeptical - as Pandu was trusting.

Suddenly, Pandu abruptly stopped walking. "I want to make you a promise," he said, turning his head toward Dhritarashtra.

"Oh, yeah?"

"I'm going to be the best king ever."

Dhritarashtra raised one eyebrow at his brother. "Why are you making this promise to me?"

"I don't know." Pandu hummed for a moment, thinking to himself. "To make it up to you, I guess."

"Make up what, exactly?"

"Everything."

Dhritarashtra laughed, but it was not a mean laugh. Pandu laughed with him, and after a moment, began resolutely marching forward again, Dhritarashtra's hand still pressed to his shoulder.

Only Vidura did not laugh at this joke. The three of them walked in silence for a few more minutes, then Vidura said, "Nobody can be the best king ever."

"Well," Pandu said defiantly, "I'm going to try."

* * *

IV.

"Dhritarashtra, do me a favor..."

"Hmmm?"

"Put on some sunglasses. Just looking at you is making my eyes hurt," Bhisma said wearily as he leaned back in his creaking chair, one hand trailing down idly over the edge of his seat and playing with the fine grains of sand below.

"What for?" Dhritarashtra asked.

"Ultraviolet radiation can damage your eyes--"

"That's a moot point," Dhritarashtra said. He could feel shallow licks of salt water swirling around his feet and small, sharp, crawling things burrowing into the sand between his toes with every breath of the tide.

"It is not," Bhisma insisted. "There's a new surgery--"

"Not today, please," Dhritarashtra said. "We're on vacation." He knew that Bhisma had never really given up hope of fixing his defective eyes. They had certainly tried everything - lasers, cybernetic implants, a trial of an artificial optical nerve in his left eye. They had used the finest doctors and tapped into the most advanced medical research available. Beneath his fine brown hair, Dhritarashtra's scalp was riddled with thin, small scars from numerous surgical incisions. And nothing had ever worked. The artificial optical nerve, for instance, had mysteriously died before Dhritarashtra's anesthesia had even worn off. Lasers had had no effect, and nobody had been able to explain why. The priests had said this was because the gods had already decided that Dhritarashtra was not to see in this lifetime. By this point in his life, Dhritarashtra was inclined to agree.

Dhritarashtra turned his head toward where he knew Pandu and Vidura were sitting, far back in the dunes that were a good, safe distance away from the edge of the water. Pandu was building a sand castle with dry sand, which Dhritarashtra supposed was not working out very well for him, and pouting. He had spent the entire morning loudly explaining to Bhisma that he would much rather spend his vacation hunting in the woods than slopping around in the hot, scratchy sand and cold, smelly waters of the beach. But Bhisma had been adamant, and eventually Pandu had finished his protests and resumed a sort of quiet, cold sulking. And Vidura was there beside him, plugging away at their doomed sandcastle, because Dhritarashtra suspected that Vidura was more than a little bit afraid of the water himself.

As if on cue, Pandu's voice floated toward Dhritarashtra from across the dunes. "Don't go too far in!" he called out, worriedly.

Dhritarashtra waved cheerfully in Pandu's general direction, and then returned to ignoring him. A redfin lacegill, Dhritarashtra recalled, was a monstrous fish, nearly the length of an ocean-going liner, and weighed several hundred thousand mass units. At the moment, Dhritarashtra was standing in water up to his ankles. He doubted that any sort of man-eating fish would be able to sneak up on him in this shallow water.

Then one of those small pointy creatures beneath his feet suddenly jabbed Dhritarashtra's left toe with one of its claws. Dhritarashtra took that, more than Pandu's warning, as his cue to get out of the water. With his cane shuffling the sand in front of him, Dhritarashtra made his way back to where his uncle Bhisma was lounging on a chair beneath a large umbrella.

It was cool beneath the umbrella. Dhritarashtra sat down on a blanket and folded his legs beneath him. "Thank you," he said as somebody unnamed and unseen (always for him, unseen) knelt down beside him and offered him a drink. Somewhere behind him, he could hear the sound of plates and silverware clinking against each other, and he could smell fish just beginning to roast. Dhritarashtra estimated ten, maybe fifteen minutes before he and his brothers would be served lunch.

"You're seventeen now, aren't you?" Bhisma said, suddenly.

"Mm."

"That means that you're old enough to try cybernetic--"

"NO," Dhritarashtra said quickly. "No. We talked about this. I don't want robot eyes."

"They're not 'robot' eyes--"

"You used to tell me," Dhritarashtra hissed, "that God gave me these eyes for a reason. Since then I've let you and your doctors stick a lot of needles in my skull, but I'm NOT going to let you scoop out my eyeballs and replace them with some useless machines that you and I both know aren't going to work anyway!"

"Watch your tongue, young man--"

"Ah, thank you!" Pandu suddenly said, snatching Dhritarashtra's drink out of his hand and downing it in one gulp. He handed the empty class back to his brother and said loudly, "That was good, what was that, redberry juice--?"

"And lickfire," Dhritarashtra said. He had been so wrapped up in arguing with Bhisma that he hadn't even heard his brother approaching behind him. But he was instantly grateful to Pandu for breaking up the fight.

"Uncle Bhisma, Uncle Bhisma," Vidura said, pulling at his uncle's hand and eagerly changing the subject, "Does this sunburn? This, here?" Dhritarashtra could imagine Vidura pulling his uncle forward and then pointing at the markings scrawled across his back.

Dhritarashtra had heard Pandu describe these markings to him before. They were dark brown and in some places mottled black, in some places a bit lumpy, like scar tissue, but in most places as smooth and as silky as normal skin. They spread across the expanse of his uncle's back, curling up the right side of his neck, covering his right shoulder and extending down his right forearm. They formed curves and loops and spirals, elaborate patterns of interlocking ellipses radiating out from each other, curving around each other, eclipsing and consuming each other. The effect, as Pandu has once described it, was much like an unusually large and lovely tattoo.

But this was not a tattoo. (And Dhritarashtra had never seen a tattoo anyway.) Bhisma had been born with these markings, as were all devakin.

"It does sunburn," Bhisma was saying to Vidura. "The bit on my neck even turned purple once." He sat patiently as Vidura traced the patterns on his back with his finger, something which he had done dozens of times before but which he still seemed to find utterly fascinating nevertheless. Dhritarashtra knew that Bhisma was used to his markings being a source of fascination for his nephews.

Then Pandu sat down beside Dhritarashtra, sharing his blanket. "You're sunburned," Pandu said, elbowing his brother. He smelled of sunblock and sweat.

"So are you," Dhritarashtra said. He could feel the heat baking off of his brother's damaged and no doubt reddening skin.

Pandu ignored this comment and turned his attention back to Bhisma. It was time for him to ask the inevitable question, because the rules of their little game was that the inevitable question always had to be asked at times like this. "Uncle Bhisma, Uncle Bhisma," Pandu said, crawling over Dhritarashtra and re-positioning himself so that he was kneeling beside Bhisma's chair, his chin resting on Bhisma's armrest. "What's your Gift?"

Bhisma laughed. "I already told you."

"Tell me again."

"You know how when you stay in a bath for too long, your fingertips get all wrinkly and pruny?"

"Yeah."

"Mine don't."

"That's even worse than the last lie you told." Dhritarashtra could hear Pandu's frown in his voice.

Bhisma laughed again. He clearly enjoyed this game. "It's true. That's my one and only Gift. I swear."

"If that were true, that would be the lamest Gift, ever."

Dhritarashtra tapped his fingers against his empty glass and frowned. Devakin were increasingly rare among the human population of Kuru, and they had been rare to begin with. Devakin were the children of a union between a human and a god - born as a human in every respect, save for the fact that they had those unusual markings on their body, and the fact that each was born with a single Gift granted from their divine progenitor. In his studies, Dhritarashtra had learned of famous devakin throughout history who had inherited extraordinary Gifts - a man who could breathe fire, a woman who could create illumination with a thought, an artist who could sculpt water.

His own uncle Bhisma was the only flesh and blood devakin that Dhritarashtra had ever met, and the only one that he even knew of. Bhisma had never actually told his nephews - or anybody, for that matter - what his Gift was. Dhritarashtra knew that he and his brothers were hardly the only people in Bhisma's life who had made a game out of guessing what the Gift could be. Sometimes Dhritarashtra wondered whether his uncle would take the secret to the grave with him.

"Okay, I'll tell you for real this time," Bhisma said, although the smile in his voice betrayed his intentions.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes. Listen. My Gift is that I don't ever have to die until I choose to."

Pandu was quiet for a moment, then said, hesitatingly, "Er, really?"

"Really."

"So you could live, like, forever?"

Bhisma laughed. "When you start to get old, you'll understand why nobody would want to live forever."

Dhritarashtra sat silently, mulling this over in his head. His uncle was lying - he had to be lying - his tone of voice was so very transparently his lying tone of voice. But if it was a lie, it was a much more convincing lie than any he had ever told before about his Gift.

"So when are you going to die?" Pandu asked.

"After I see my great-grandchildren married," Bhisma said casually. He ruffled Pandu's hair. "You will give me great-grandchildren, won't you?"

"Of course," Pandu said. "And when _I _have kids I won't make them do homework and I won't tell them lies when they ask me questions and..." He paused for a moment, then added, "And I definitely won't get myself eaten by carnivorous fish."

* * *

V.

"You smell nice," Dhritarashtra said. Then he added, "That's unusual."

"Ha, thanks," Pandu said, fussily adjusting his coat buttons. He turned toward Vidura. "How do I look?"

"Marriageable," Vidura said. "Very marriageable."

"I was hoping for 'handsome' or 'dashing'--"

"Do you even know this girl?" Dhritarashtra asked again.

"Never met her before. I heard she's nice, though." Pandu turned back toward his mirror, as the tailor crouching behind him quickly sewed up the finishing touches on his trousers. "It'll be more of an adventure this way."

Dhritarashtra shook his head. He had never understood the appeal of a groom-choosing ceremony, but Pandu seemed determined, and anyway he generally seemed to have bad luck with the girlfriends that he did meet on his own.

"This is so strange," Vidura suddenly said. He was sitting on Pandu's bed beside Dhritarashtra.

"In what way?"

"In the way that you're running off to some distant planet to attend a party for a princess that you've never even met before, and when you come back tomorrow morning you could be married. _Married._ As in, with a wife."

"And it's about time," the tailor mumbled from beneath Pandu's trailing silks.

"Have I mentioned that I think you're insane?" Dhritarashtra added.

"Eighteen times in the past ten minutes." Pandu hissed with frustration - he was fiddling with a rebellious lock of his hair. "You should try getting married yourself."

"I can't believe you're telling me that. You're not even married yet. You haven't even been able to keep a girlfriend for more than a few weeks at a time--"

"Which is why I'm getting married. So that I don't have to worry about switching off anymore. Er, if she chooses me, that is." Pandu jerked at his rebellious lock of hair with his comb, an action which sounded very painful to Dhritarashtra - he hated the sound of hair being pulled. "Why don't you marry that girl you've been writing to for what, like, two years?"

"She's just a friend. I haven't even met her face-to-face."

"She's Gandharan royalty, isn't she? We could use an alliance with Gandhara."

"Spoken like a true king," the tailor said as he tugged at Pandu's trousers.

Dhritarashtra sighed through his nose. He often found that he liked Pandu more as a meddling little brother than he did as a meddling king. He also thought that it was about time somebody started getting on Vidura's case about this whole marriage thing. He certainly got enough from both Pandu and Bhisma, and he wished that they would start bothering somebody else about it.

"When I have kids," Pandu was telling his mirror, "I think I'll teach them to hunt game rather than harpoon fish. I hope this Princess Kunti likes living in the woods, because that's where we'll be taking all of our vacations. And--"

"But harpooning your first redfin is a family tradition!" Vidura gasped, scandalized.

"I'm thinking maybe fifteen or so sons, a couple daughters thrown into the mix. I hope she's up to it," Pandu continued to babble, to nobody in particular. "Three hours in subspace to get to Madra?! I've never even been off the planet's surface before--! Well, at least she's holding her groom-choosing on Madra instead of Kunti. Kunti is way too far away. And who names a princess after her own planet anyway?! Maybe sixteen sons, I'd rather have an even number."

"You're not," Vidura said suddenly, "just doing this so that you can get away from the filibuster in Parliament and the protestors outside the palace demanding protection for those endangered redhoof deer up north and the fact that the head of the High Council was just caught having sexual relations with a ten-year-old boy?"

Pandu froze, his comb still stuck in his hair.

"Or the fact that Lord Jayawanta was in your office this morning telling you to drop trade sanctions against Panchala and that Lord Arunaashva was in there five minutes later threatening to resign his post if you did so?" Sensing but not seeing the shocked look on Pandu's face, Dhritarashtra waved his hand vaguely and said, "I know you were planning to tell me later, but you forget that I have better ears than yours - in more ways than one."

"Okay," Pandu said, "Okay, so maybe it would be nice to forget about all of that for one night. So maybe it would be nice to finally _have_ a royal wedding around here and at least make people forget that I'm supposed to solve all of their problems for one lousy day, maybe two. Is it a crime to do any of that?"

"No," Vidura said. "But do you want my opinion about Arunaashva?"

"Always."

"Let the bastard resign. You should appoint Lord Makaranda as your Minister of Economics. He actually understands what a dividend tax is."

"And fire that priest," Dhritarashtra added, "and push the law to protect that silly deer. No, wait, skip the Parliament. Just issue a decree, it's within your rights. And it'll appease more people than it will upset."

"Thanks." Pandu turned toward his brothers. "What would I do without you guys?"

"Probably something stupid like running off and marrying some princess that you've never even met before."

"That's nineteen times now."

"Just saying."

Pandu left shortly thereafter, and returned with not only Princess Kunti as his wife, but Princess Madri as well. Dhritarashtra was not particularly surprised - as stubborn and as single-minded as his brother could be about some things, he was often famously indecisive about others.

It was the custom that, among royalty, a man was allowed to take more than one wife. Hastinapura was more than willing to celebrate not just one, but two royal marriages in a row.

* * *

VI.

Pandu's wife Kunti had dark eyes and a soft smile and spoke his language with a lilting, melodic accent. She was polite and reserved but nevertheless always quite clear in her opinions, which she offered frequently to her husband, on everything from matters of health care to the reform of Hastinapura's crushingly bureaucratic public education system. Within days after her wedding she had installed herself as head of the royal household, and ruled over the minute details of draperies, decor, and napkin colors and silverware placement with a firm fist. Pandu's other wife, Madri, seemed fully aware of and yet content with her position of deferring to Kunti. Madri was, in the opinions of many (particularly the sectors of the media that liked to gossip about such things) much prettier and more delicate than her counterpart Kunti.

Thankfully, neither of them particularly minded vacationing in the woods, as long as there was a log cabin's roof over their heads and plenty of servants along to make life comfortable.

Three years after Pandu's double marriage, however, there was still no heir to the throne.

Bhisma cornered Pandu one evening and, when he was reasonably certain that they were out of earshot of anybody but the dark-suited bodyguards lurking in the shadows behind them, asked him bluntly, "How often are you trying?"

Pandu seemed to choke on nothing in particular, and then he coughed.

"Now is not the time to be embarrassed," Bhisma hissed.

Pandu looked to the left, then to the right, seeking some escape from this interrogation,. Finding none, finally hung his head and mumbled, "Often. Every night. Sometimes in the mornings, too."

"And... nothing?" Bhisma sounded incredulous.

"Not even a false alarm." And then, anticipating Bhisma's next line of question, Pandu continued, exasperated, "And we're saying all the right prayers and doing the right pujas and Madri even got some pills that're supposed to help and we've tried every position and, and this is so very much NOT a conversation that I want to be having with you--"

"Maybe you should see a doctor," Bhisma said very quietly.

Pandu shook his head. "No, I don't need--"

"Your wives have seen doctors. I've seen their medical files."

"They what--?! You saw--?!"

"If there's a problem here, it's not _their_ problem. Understand?"

"I dare you to be less discreet about this," Pandu hissed, eyeing the nearby bodyguards nervously, all of whom were wearing shades and stony expressions, and all of whom were probably listening with great interest. "Fine. I'll see a doctor."

"Great. Wonderful!" Bhisma clapped his nephew on the shoulder. "You are going to give me grandchildren, aren't you?"

"Of course," said Pandu. For years he had been waiting for the sons and daughters that had not yet come. He wondered how much longer he would have to wait.

* * *

VII.

Dhritarashtra was having dinner with the portly Minister of Defense when Sanjaya leaned down and whispered into his ear, "You should come."

"Mm?"

"Your uncle needs to talk to you."

"Ish it an emergenshi?" The Minister of Defense hiccupped, having overheard the whispering messenger. "Come, come now. We've jusht uncorked a twenny-year-old--"

"It is an emergency," Sanjaya, Dhritarashtra's closest aide, said tersely.

"Right." Dhritarashtra stood up quickly. "Terribly sorry," he mumbled as he turned his back to the Minister of Defense, reached for his cane, and followed Sanjaya out of the room. They passed through crowded hallways, down stairs, and outside into the cool night air. Dhritarashtra realized that he was being shuffled into the backseat of an auto - one of the long, sleek, black, _quiet _ones that were kept around the palace specifically for the purpose of transporting royalty on particularly discreet errands. "Where are we going?" he demanded. "Where's my uncle?"

"Uni-Med," somebody said, and for a moment Dhritarashtra was utterly baffled, until he remembered, with a sick feeling of dread in his stomach, that this was the way that most people referred to the university hospital located in the center of Hastinapura.

"Pandu, Vidura," Dhritarashtra croaked hoarsely, clutching at somebody's sleeve. "Are they--?"

"Fine, they're fine, nobody is hurt."

"Oh," Dhritarashtra sighed, sinking with relief into the back seat of the auto that had apparently been arranged just for him. Sanjaya had not come with him. But the sick feeling of dread would not leave his stomach alone. He was being taken to a hospital. It was an emergency. This couldn't be good news.

The drive seemed to take forever. When they arrived, Dhritarashtra was pulled out of the car and led immediately into a cold and sterile place that reeked of antiseptic and polished metal and the underlying smell of blood. His stomach lurched again. The smell of the hospital was dredging all sorts of unpleasant memories up out of his subconsciousness, memories of a childhood spent with his head in bandages and blood running from his useless eyes, so many stays in the hospital, so many worthless surgeries, so many failed cures--

"This way."

Dhritarashtra followed until Vidura was suddenly there, as if he had appeared out of nowhere. "There you are!" he gasped breathlessly, clutching at his brother's arm. "I was hoping you would get here sooner - maybe you can stop it - they've all gone insane, every last one of them--!"

"What exactly is going on here?"

"You have to talk to Uncle Bhisma, maybe you can convince him that he's being a prat--"

"Vidura, _what_--?!"

"Uncle Bhisma is not being a prat," Pandu suddenly said, rather defensively.

Dhritarashtra was not sure of the exact moment when he and Vidura had transitioned from being in a hallway to being in what obviously sounded and smelled like a hospital room. But suddenly they were no longer walking, a door was closed behind them, and there were a lot fewer people in the room with them. Dhritarashtra identified Pandu's voice and the sound of Bhisma's distinctive nosehair-ruffling breathing.

And there was someone else in the room, someone unfamiliar. Two someones, Dhritarashtra thought, after he took a moment to get his bearings. One was breathing quietly and smelled of rubbing alcohol - a doctor, then. And there was someone else who smelled like pine and woodsmoke.

"This is the right decision," Pandu said, "And you know it very well, Vidura."

Dhritarashtra shook his hand angrily away from Vidura. "Will somebody _please_--"

"I'll explain, Your Majesty," the unfamiliar man who must have been a doctor said.

Dhritarashtra fell silent, feeling his own blood suddenly run cold. His brother Pandu was the only one addressed as "Your Majesty." That was the way it had always been. That was the way that it was supposed to be. That was--

"These scans and these X-rays show that - er, sorry, I mean, well, if you could see, that is - during a routine examination of, of, er, of--"

"Of my bloody important royal balls," Pandu supplied helpfully.

Bhisma coughed, but the doctor struggled onward bravely. "We found some, er, abnormal cell formations. Further inspections revealed that this was an infection present in the intestines, liver, and most alarmingly, in the frontal lobe of the brain. We believe that it began in the lymph nodes many years ago--"

"Infection? What kind of infection?"

When the doctor said nothing, Pandu again stepped in. "Cancerous," he said, with cheerful bravado.

"We can remove the growths in the testes and liver and the intestines, but the growth in the brain is..." The doctor trailed off, then took a deep breath and continued. "But that won't solve anything, really, because more growths will surely appear - the lymphatic system is completely ruined, and spreading infected cells throughout the body every moment, and... and..."

"And I'm as surprised as anybody," Pandu said, again with that odd cheerfulness. "I mean, I've never felt healthier in my life. There's no pain at all."

"The pain will come soon," the doctor finished, quietly. "And then, honestly, you won't have much longer."

"Oh," Dhritarashtra said weakly, feeling his knees turning to jelly. Somehow he managed to stumble forward and, leaning heavily on the rail on the side of Pandu's bed, reached out and touched his brother's face. "Oh, Pandu, I'm so sorry--"

"In retrospect, this explains a lot," Pandu said, still smiling his odd, forced smile beneath the curve of Dhritarashtra's hand. "The doc says my sperm has been useless for the past five years, that's why we haven't had any children yet."

"Kunti and Madri--"

"They're on their way here right now," Vidura said.

"But you needed to be told first," a deep, rumbling voice said. Dhritarashtra straightened stiffly and turned slowly toward the owner of that voice - the last person in the room, the one who smelled like a forest night.

Dhritarashtra licked his lips and said, very slowly, "Why me?" Then he frowned and added, "Who are you?"

"Vyasa," the forest man answered.

Dhritarashtra's breath caught in his throat.

"A hermit," Vidura snorted.

"A wise man," Bhisma countered, forcefully. "Your father and your grandfather always did well by his advice."

"Lord Pandu is no longer fit to be a king," Vyasa went on, his throaty voice rumbling. "I would know this even if Lord Vishnu had not told me. A king must be of sound body. A king must be able to produce an heir."

Dhritarashtra was already shaking his head. He already knew where this all was going. "No, no," he said, "I couldn't--"

"You must."

"But Vidura should--"

"You are the eldest and the first son."

"The gods don't want me on the throne. That's why they never gave me eyes. The gods chose Pandu--"

"And now they have chosen you."

"It should have been you all along," Pandu suddenly said.

Dhritarashtra suddenly pulled his hand away from his brother's face. "Don't SAY that!"

"You were always better at all this king stuff - all this economic and diplomatic and history and political stuff - than I was. You've been practically running the planet up until now anyway. The people love you." Pandu's voice was very quiet, but very still, and very calm. "You have to do this for me."

"I can't do this to you!"

"_For_ me," Pandu corrected him. "Because I have to go away."

"This is where the insane part comes in," Vidura said from somewhere behind Dhritarashtra.

"I'll go into the woods, with Kunti and Madri," Pandu continued, very calmly. "I would rather end my days there than anywhere else."

"That _is_ insane." Dhritarashtra fumbled for the right words. "That's - That's exile, that's what that is! You can't just send yourself into exile because of--"

"The Lord Pandu is cursed," Vyasa rumbled. "He must not stay in the presence of royalty. He must leave you. There is to be no more contact between him and anyone within this royal family, including his own brothers."

Dhritarashtra angrily snapped his head toward the source of this maddening voice and the even more maddening stink of an old man from the forest. "If I AM the king now," he hissed, "then you should best stop_interrupting me_." Then he whirled back toward the bed where his brother was sitting. "If you're sick, then the last thing you should be doing is running off into the wilderness where we can't--"

"Prolong it?" Pandu asked, darkly.

"Your Highness," the doctor said, somewhat timidly, "If you were to stay here, we could do much to ensure that your remaining time is, well, er... comfortable. We have many ways to ease the pain, and with some very minor surgeries we could possibly grant you many more years of a healthy, pain-free life--"

"No," Pandu said, firmly. "No drugs. No prolonging the inevitable. And especially no cutting off my balls," he finished angrily. Then he snorted and mumbled under his breath, " 'Very minor surgeries' my foot."

"Your wives," Vidura said. "You can't make this decision for them."

"It's within my rights."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean that it isn't wrong."

For a very long moment, nobody said anything. Then Pandu sighed and said, "I'll let them decide whether to come with me or not. But I'm going, regardless. Whether you call it exile or not, it really is how I'd always imagined I'd like to spend my retirement. I was hoping that it would be a few decades further down the road, but... Well," he said definitively, as if that were the end of the matter.

"I agree," Bhisma said. "You should go." Then he addressed Dhritarashtra sharply. "I'll handle the press conference tonight. You'll be coronated tomorrow. Tomorrow is, believe it or not, an auspicious day for a coronation anyway."

Dhritarashtra's hands clutched convulsively at the railing of his brother's horrible, cold, metal hospital bed. He opened and closed his mouth, searching desperately for some last argument that he could bring up, some last way that he could protest any of this, something to say, anything to say. He could feel Vidura's eyes boring into his back.

Then Pandu reached out and touched Dhritarashtra's white-knuckled hands. "It's up to you to produce a heir to the throne," he said, bluntly, but not uncheerfully. "You should marry that nice girl you keep writing letters to. Have a big wedding party. It will make you feel better."

It was at that moment that Dhritarashtra knew that he was defeated. He and Vidura both.

Dhritarashtra opened his mouth to say something else - _Don't leave me_, perhaps, or even worse, _I never wished for this_, even though he knew that Pandu already knew that it was true.

But at that moment, Dhritarashtra was saved from having to say anything at all, because a commotion on the other side of the locked door behind them signaled the arrival of Kunti and Madri. Dhritarashtra heard the doctor take a deep breath, steeling himself for having to deliver his explanation all over again. He would probably be even less willing to openly mention the king's testicles in front of his two wives.

* * *

VIII.

"She'll never marry me," Dhritarashtra said, for the thousandth time that morning. "You know that. This is pointless."

"You're a king. Who wouldn't want to marry you?" Vidura fussed with the lapels of his brother's coat one last time. "I'd marry you."

"I'm more horrified than comforted at the thought."

"You've known her for, what, how many years now?"

"Known but not met--"

"Well, that's quite a bit more than Pandu could say when he..." Vidura trailed off, then apparently decided that Dhritarashtra's lapels needed a bit more work. Vidura and Dhritarashtra's brother had been gone for months already, and his absence was still painful. Dhritarashtra reflected silently that everywhere around him seemed so much quieter now - probably because his brother had always been somewhat of a loud person, in more ways than one.

A door creaked open behind Dhritarashtra, and he turned his head. There was a rustle of clothing and the sound of hands being clapped together - a bow. "Your Majesty," a stranger said, "Her Royal Highness awaits."

Dhritarashtra walked forward slowly, holding his head high. Vidura followed behind him. Dhritarashtra held his cane but did not use it. Through one door, down a hallway, through another door - past another stranger bowing. Gandhari's servants, no doubt. Then Dhritarashtra caught the scent of a woman's flowery perfume on the air, and knew that he was in the right place.

Again, that rustle of clothing - somebody standing up. Somebody curtseying. "Your Majesty," a low, rich alto voice greeted him.

"Your Highness." Dhritarashtra noted that Vidura was now standing at his side.

There was the sound of a fan fluttering in Gandhari's hand. She suddenly laughed, low and bright. Then she addressed Vidura. "Well?"

Vidura put his hand on Dhritarashtra's shoulder. "She's beautiful," he said.

"I can hear that," Dhritarashtra said. He walked slowly toward Gandhari, reached out, and touched her hair, her cheek, and brushed his fingers against the curve of her neck. He wondered what she was wearing, what sort of material it was made out of, but he was afraid to touch her at all beneath her bare collarbone - to do so would have surely been utterly inappropriate.

"Oh, now don't be shy," she laughed again, and suddenly grasped Dhritarashtra's hand in hers and pressed it against the side of her face, guiding his fingers over the curved hollow beside her eyes, down the incline of her nose, toward the softness of her lips.

"Right, so, um, I'll be going now," Vidura said, rather loudly, as he hurriedly exited back through the doorway through which he had come. Dhritarashtra heard the sound of other footsteps as well - more of Gandhari's silent servants, discreetly taking their leave of their mistress. Finally, a door closed behind Dhritarashtra, and the two of them were alone.

Dhritarashtra said nothing for a moment, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. Then he felt a flutter of eyelashes against the palm of his hand - Gandhari was closing her eyes. "Is this what it's like for you?" she asked, reaching out with her own hands, fumbling blindly toward his face, finding it and then proceeding to explore the ridges of his eyebrows and the shape of his nose with her slender fingertips. Then she asked, bluntly, "Why didn't you ever send me a picture?"

"I've been told by reliable sources that I'm not much to look at."

"Who would say such a thing?"

"My brother Vidura."

"Then off with his head. He wouldn't know handsome if it smacked him in the face."

"He did just call you beautiful."

"Well, then, just for that, I'll have to spare his life," she said airily. Then she laughed again, and Dhritarashtra decided right then and there that Gandhari's laugh was the single most beautiful sound he had ever heard in his entire life. She was tracing the line of his jaw with the ball of her thumb. "I kind of like this," she said, "touching instead of seeing. You have a very nice face to touch, has anybody ever told you that?" She suddenly slid her hand around the back of his neck and began pulling him forward, as if to--

Dhritarashtra suddenly pulled away from her. "You do know why I invited you here, right?" he asked.

"I have a good enough guess."

Dhritarashtra took a deep breath. Then, realizing that there was no sense in delaying the inevitable any longer, he asked, "Will you marry me?"

"Goodness." Dhritarashtra heard her fluttering her fan in front of her face. "I shall tie a blindfold over my face and never uncover my eyes again."

When Dhritarashtra stood silently for a few seconds, unsure of what to say in the face of such a proclamation, Gandhari folded up her fan with a snap and said, impishly, "That was a yes, Your Majesty."

"All right... All right, then. That makes it okay to do this." And then Dhritarashtra leaned forward and kissed her.

After an eternity, she pulled away from him and gasped, "Tongue!"

"Well, yes, was it... too much?"

"No, it was perfect." She pulled herself close to him, and breathed against the nape of his neck, then slid forward on her tiptoes and nibbled at his earlobe. "I felt like I saw you with that kiss," she whispered huskily into his ear, "with that taste. On our wedding night, I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to see every inch of your body," she breathed, "by tasting it. That's a promise."

"But you were joking about the blindfold thing, right?"

"No." She rested her head against his neck. "From this moment forward, I swear to you that I will only experience the world the way that you experience it - all taste and touch and sound and smell. It's good to be with you and to touch you. It's a better type of seeing than I ever imagined it could be."

He wrapped his arms around her, finally able to run his hands against the silky material of her gown, over and up and down the curve of her back. "You're strange," he said.

"I love you."

He was quiet for a moment, then he said, "You can't do that for me. I'll never be able to do something like that for you. Never."

"Who said that you have to? Love doesn't work that way."

"I can't let you blind yourself--"

"I love you," she repeated, as if this were enough to finish any argument about the matter. And Dhritarashtra realized, suddenly, that it was.

* * *

IX.

"Will this do?" Bhisma asked, as he rolled the last of the ungainly melons into Dhritarashtra's overflowing arms with his stiff, cold hands. "They've been frozen since last year, but it's the best the kitchen staff could find for me, and you know these things are out of season right now--"

"I know. She knows. Come in," Dhritarashtra said, hugging six of the icy cold orange melons to his chest and hoping that the forces of gravity and friction would keep the other six piled on top of them in place. He turned around, began stumbling awkwardly toward the bedroom that he shared with his wife. "Love?" he called out, listening to the footsteps of Bhisma following behind him.

"In here, darling, and by the way, tell Lord Bhisma that he's a saint among men," Gandhari's voice came from what sounded like very, very far away. But it wasn't far at all - Dhritarashtra rounded a corner, and he was in the bedroom.

"Oh," said Bhisma, coming up behind Dhritarashtra. "Your Majesty... You do not appear well."

"Not what a lady likes to hear, darling," Gandhari said from her perpetual (permanent, Dhritarashtra was beginning to fear) half-sitting, half-lying position on top on one side of their shared bed. "Even at three in the morning. I believe you've just forfeited your sainthood. You do realize that there's a special level of Hell reserved for men who insult a lady's lovely face, don't you?"

Dhritarashtra was just realizing that there was no sane reason for him to have brought his armful of melons into the bedroom in the first place - he should have fetched a servant to take care of them - when Gandhari suddenly said, "Oh, just toss me one of those and drop the rest on the floor. I feel like I could eat all of them right now."

"They're still half-frozen--"

Gandhari snorted derisively. "I've been carrying this baby for ten bloody months, I think I can handle a little frozen melon."

"Well, you're the queen," Dhritarashtra said, opening his arms and unceremoniously dropping a dozen half-frozen melons around his feet. He bent down, picked up a particularly cold and frosty one, and tossed it toward his wife. She caught it, as he knew she would, despite her blindfolded eyes. "Next time you have a midnight craving, do you think you could make it for a food that isn't six months out of season?"

"My baby is one month out of season," Gandhari grumbled. Dhritarashtra was partly amazed, and partly not surprised at all, when a moment later he heard the wet, ripping sound of his wife's fingers tearing into the rind of her still-not-entirely-thawed melon.

"I'll get a knife--" Bhisma suddenly said.

"Don't bother. I've got it." Gandhari was using her left hand to scrape handfuls of frozen melon meat into her cupped right hand, and then shoveling it into her mouth. "Yes. Right. Now _this_ is what I've been needing."

Dhritarashtra toed at one of the frozen melons at his feet. They were all covered in frost, which was already beginning to melt into his plush bedroom carpeting. He could only imagine the mess that his wife was making all over their sheets. He sighed, then turned his head toward Bhisma and nodded, a gesture which they both understood meant that Bhisma was dismissed.

But Bhisma did not leave. Instead, he stepped gingerly around the bed and toward Gandhari's side, where he knelt beside her. Gandhari paused in her devouring of her barely thawed melon, and made a small gasp of surprise when Bhisma suddenly reached out and rested his hand on her swollen belly. "You're a blimp," he said.

"You DO remember what I just told you about that special level in Hell, don't you?"

"This isn't natural."

"It's an overdue baby. It is perfectly natural. It happens to women all the time. Not as though you would know."

"Most women don't get so big that they can't even get out of bed--"

"It's going to be a big baby."

"Look, I know that you want to do this whole natural birth thing, but..."

"But we have doctors for a reason," Gandhari said, imitating Bhisma's tone of voice so perfectly that for a moment, Dhritarashtra shivered. "I believe that _my husband _has discussed this with you before. My mother had me _without_ ultrasounds or epidermals or drugs or anything of the sort, and I'll be damned if I'm going to subject this baby to any of that."

"We're not even going to find out if it's a boy or a girl," Dhritarashtra reminded his uncle, holding up his hands. "She's right, it really is more exciting that way." Although he knew that he sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

"Look," Gandhari said, impatiently, "I'll be the first to admit that it's been no picnic, what with the vomiting every morning, my bladder being squeezed to death, the swollen ankles and all, but really, and this is probably something that your extra Y chromosome won't let you understand, but there really is something to be said for enduring all of that... It makes it more, well... You wouldn't understand."

"Excitement is all fine and good, but..." Bhisma stood up with a rustle of his damp, ice-splattered clothing. "This isn't just your baby, you understand. This is Kuru's future prince or princess. This could be the next heir to the throne. You can have your fun and talk about how exciting and rewarding a natural birth is all you want, but the fact remains that you can't - you shouldn't - you mustn't do anything that could endanger the health of this baby. Right now, the baby is overdue. Very overdue. And I'm worried. People are worried. Everyone is worried. You think that the tabloids aren't already spreading rumors about this 'freak baby'? My advisors have been getting calls from doctors on the other side of the planet telling them to get me to get you to do something about this baby. At least..." Bhisma threw up his arms in frustration. "An ultrasound or a scan of whatever it is they do to take pictures of babies! Just to make sure that it's all right and that there are no problems--"

"Radiation from those machines can harm the fetus," Gandhari said, her mouth full of half-frozen melon.

"You're as stubborn as Dhritarashtra is about his bloody eyes!" Bhisma suddenly snapped. "LOOK at you! You're a bedbound woman with a ten-month-fetus in your belly and a blindfold over your eyes eating a frozen melon that you clawed open with your bare hands and you're telling me that an ultrasound machine is going to radiate your baby to death?!" He suddenly snapped his head up, toward Dhritarashtra, who was staring at him, wide-eyed, from across the bed. "And YOU. You're her husband, you're this baby's father, you can't just let her get away with--"

"Do you honestly think that the baby is in danger?" Dhritarashtra asked, calmly, but rather coldly.

"Honestly? Yes." Bhisma stepped around the side of the bed and began shuffling towards the bedroom door. "If you would at least see a doctor and get a scan... It would make your Uncle Bhisma very happy."

Dhritarashtra held his breath for a moment, then let it out in one long, slow hiss. "Fine." He said. "We'll go see a doctor."

"Well then," Gandhari said, licking melon juice off her fingertips, "It's your fault if the baby is born with a freakish third arm or something."

"Any freak baby that you or I bring into the world will be right at home in this family."

Gandhari paused for a moment, then thoughtfully plopped another piece of melon into her mouth. "True," she said. "Very true."

* * *

X.

"Honestly? I've never seen anything like this before," the doctor said, nervously.

Dhritarashtra recognized his nervous voice and demeanor. It was the same doctor who had told Pandu that he had cancer in his balls (and just about everywhere else in his body as well). Dhritarashtra thought that it was rather impolite of him to not be able to remember this particular doctor's name. But then again, this particular doctor always seemed to have bad news. Dhritarashtra didn't particularly _want _to remember his name.

Dhritarashtra tapped Vidura on his shoulder. "Tell me what it looks like again," he said.

"It looks like a bunch of white, tiny specks. A lot of white, tiny specks."

"And that's not what an ultrasound of a baby is supposed to look like?"

"No," the doctor said. "Because this is obviously not a baby."

"Don't be ridiculous. Gandhari has felt it kicking. I've felt it kicking. I've felt its heartbeat!"

"A heartbeat? Are you sure?"

"You stupid man, I can hear better than any of you here!" Dhritarashtra hissed. "She hasn't seen this yet?"

"She's in the other room, napping," Vidura said. "We called you first. Uncle Bhisma is bringing Vyasa--"

"Not HIM again!"

"I know, I know," Vidura said quickly. "But he's the only one who might be able to save your baby--"

"That is NOT a baby," the doctor said again. He sounded frightened, and not necessarily of the reaction from the king that he was giving this news to. "That can't be natural, whatever it is. There's no possible way it could be human--"

"Don't say things like that!" Dhritarashtra snapped.

"True that it's not a baby," a low, gravely voice said from behind Dhritarashtra. "It rather looks to be many babies, if you ask me," Vyasa said, striding right past Dhritarashtra and toward whatever infernal scan or image the doctor had been showing Vidura, hanging on a wall. He brought the smell of damp leaves and dirty feet into the room with him. "But first, are you absolutely sure that this is not an equipment malfunction?"

"C-Certainly not," the doctor stuttered. "We tried it a dozen times on more than one machine. I think she wanted to throttle me by the fourteenth or so scan - and the picture always stayed the same--"

Dhritarashtra realized that Bhisma was standing behind him. He heard Bhisma whistle, low and awed, when he saw whatever it was that Vyasa was now examining very intently. "That's--"

"Many fetuses," Vyasa said. "Very, very many fetuses." He was tapping points on the scan. "Each of these pale specks is a developing zygote. They all appear to be human. Although they'll certainly die or be miscarried if left inside the queen's uterus for much longer. She will likely die as well."

"How many?" Vidura asked faintly.

"Seventy? Eighty? Perhaps more."

"That's insane and impossible." Dhritarashtra glared with his useless eyes in Vyasa's general direction. "Are you even a doctor? Have you ever been to medical school or read a textbook or, or anything?"

"No and no," Vyasa said, dismissively. Then he went on, "The reason that each fetus is still so small and undeveloped, even after ten months, is that there are so many of them in the first place - they must have been competing for resources from the mother's body, and have been developing at an abnormally slow rate. Also at an uneven rate, I might add." He was tapping points on the scan again. "Some of these fetuses are already somewhat advanced - this one even seems to have arm buds. Others - this one here, it's only the size of a dot - surely no more than a ball of undifferentiated stem cells. There may be more that are too small to see with our naked eyes and this image."

"So what do we do?" Dhritarashtra asked. "Can they be saved?"

For a moment, the room fell deathly quiet. Then Vyasa asked quietly, "Saved... Your Majesty?"

"Yes. Can you do anything to help my children come to term? You know, be born?"

Again, that silence. It seemed to stretch out forever. Then Bhisma said, very softly, "You can't be serious."

"What is this nonsense, now?"

"This," Vyasa said, thumping his fist against the photograph or scan or ultrasound or whatever it was displayed on the wall, "is not natural. This is an abomination. This is something utterly horrific. This is something that surely would have killed your wife had you allowed it to go on much longer. There is no possible way that something like this could have happened without the interference of some power beyond your or my ability to comprehend."

"And not the divine kind of power, it would appear," Bhisma said.

"Stop it," Dhritarashtra said through gritted teeth.

But Vyasa went on. "I've never seen anything like this before, not this specifically, but I know the work of a demon's hand when I see it--"

"STOP," Dhritarashtra shouted, holding out his hand. "Do NOT say things like that! Not about my children!"

"Your majesty--"

"You don't UNDERSTAND," Dhritarashtra shouted, not caring that he was shouting, not caring that everyone in this particular wing of the hospital could probably hear him by now. "They'll KNOW if you say things like that about them. My children will KNOW. It doesn't matter if they haven't been born or if they've just been born or if they're not supposed to remember these sorts of things - those words will STICK to them for the rest of their lives and they'll KNOW, they'll always KNOW what you said about them--"

"Calm down," Vidura said, trying to grasp at his brother's shoulder, but Dhritarashtra angrily slapped him away and whirled to face Bhisma. "I would KNOW," he snarled, "and YOU should know better than this! Don't think that I don't know what they said about me when I was born! Don't think that I don't know that they called me a demon child and that the priests said I was cursed but YOU and Father told them that they were wrong and YOU were always there for ME and now YOU want ME to damn my own children before they're even born? Before they even a chance?!"

"Y-you..." Dhritarashtra had never heard Bhisma's voice shake so badly before. Bhisma licked his lips, then mumbled, "There's no way you could remember any of--"

"Any child, even an infant, would remember being labeled as a demon."

"That was different, then," Bhisma said, now sounding defensive. "There was nothing unnatural about your being born blind. People were just being superstitious--"

"THIS IS NOT NATURAL!" Dhritarashtra snarled, jabbing his own fingers angrily toward his own eyes. "You know that as well as I do! _That's why it could never be cured! And that's why you made Pandu the king instead of ME_!"

"You're hysterical--"

"I WON'T LET YOU KILL MY CHILDREN! I WON'T!"

That was when Vidura grabbed his right arm and Bhisma grabbed his left arm and Vidura tried to plead with him, "Calm down, for the love of--!" but Bhisma took the most direct route. His hand slapped across Dhritarashtra's cheek hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

"Are you done screaming yet?" Bhisma asked, his voice chilly enough to cause a shiver to creep up Dhritarashtra's spine.

"Only if you're done trying to murder my children," Dhritarashtra answered with equal coldness, shrugging off Vidura's grip and using his free hand to gingerly touch his already swelling cheek. A moment later, Bhisma let go of his other arm and slowly stepped away. "I could have you arrested for that, you know," Dhritarashtra said.

"Don't be daft. I'm your uncle. I raised you, young man."

"I know." Dhritarashtra turned his attention back toward Vyasa. "What can be done to save my children?" he asked, more calmly now.

"It is possible..." Vyasa paused for a moment, then said, "Will you first listen to something unpleasant that I have to say?"

"Go ahead, if you must."

"You said as much yourself - that this problem with your eyesight is fundamentally unnatural and utterly inexplicable by any of the medical sciences. And now, we have this equally unnatural and utterly inexplicable pregnancy of your wife. Now, assuming that the children do turn out to be yours and not the offspring of a wayward asura--"

"My wife would never-- has never--"

"The point is that the problem may lie within you," Vyasa said, ignoring the king's interruptions, as usual. "Have you ever considered as much? That there might be something evil within you? A curse or a mark, or..."

Dhritarashtra took a deep breath. "And if there is? So what?"

"I could help you," Vyasa said. "I could teach you techniques that would rid you of--"

"I'm a king. I don't have time to sit around meditating and singing nonsense hymns to the Goddess," Dhritarashtra snapped. "I have more important things to do - like running people's lives. And raising my eighty or so children, if you'll just go ahead and do your job."

"Right," Vyasa said. "We'll have to remove the fetuses from the queen's body as soon as possible. They'll die or they'll kill her if left in there much longer. Then I suppose that each will have to be brought to term in an artificial incubator - the technology certainly exists, but--"

"But we don't have that many artificial wombs," the doctor, who had been silent throughout all of this, suddenly spoke up. "We have twenty in this facility and there are ten more at Adarsh on the other side of the planet. But that's it."

"Build more. I will provide whatever funds you need." Then, at that moment, Dhritarashtra suddenly decided that he needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else, other than in that room at that moment. "That is all," he said, and turned on his heel and left.

Vidura followed him out, silently. Dhritarashtra made his way toward nowhere in particular, ignoring the stares of all the slipper-footed hospital staff and paper-robed patients that passed by him. He could feel their eyes crawling over him - he wondered how many of them had heard his little shouting episode a few moments earlier. Finally, his cane bumped against the leg of a bench, and Dhritarashtra gratefully sank down into the hard, uncomfortable cushions placed on top of it. A moment later, Vidura was sitting beside him, squeezing his hand. Dhritarashtra could already hear his dark-suited bodyguards surrounding them, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

"Do you think it's my fault that Pandu got sick?" Dhritarashtra suddenly asked.

Vidura started. "What in the world--?"

Dhritarashtra squeezed Vidura's hand - probably hard enough to hurt, but Vidura made not a sound - and took a deep breath. "I always wished... I mean, I always thought, secretly, that I should have been... And Pandu was always saying it too," he added quickly, "He was always saying 'You should be the king' or 'You know I'm not as smart as you' and I just..."

"I know. He did say that a lot."

"But I never, ever, ever wished him any harm!" Dhritarashtra said, his voice trembling. "I just thought it would be nice, if, if..."

"If everybody came to their senses?"

"...Something like that." His hands trembled. "What if what that Vyasa said is right?" Dhritarashtra asked. "What if there is something wrong with me?" He licked his lips. "Maybe the gods took away my eyes because they needed to punish me. But there's something inside me that just keeps hurting other people--"

"The gods didn't take away your eyes," Vidura pointed out. "They never gave them to you in the first place."

"You're not helping."

"Then listen to me. What happened to Pandu had nothing to do with you. It couldn't have. You're his brother. I know, everybody knows, how much you love him. And that's a powerful thing. That's a protection - not a curse."

"Not a good enough protection, apparently." Dhritarashtra trembled for a moment. "I miss him so much."

"I know. I do too."

* * *

XI..

Fully a year after whatever had been growing in Queen Gandhari's womb was removed from her body, her first son was, for lack of a better term, born.

"He feels so beautiful," the blind queen said, stroking her infant son's downy hair as he slept in her arms.

"He's a lot more beautiful now that he's stopped screaming," Dhritarashtra agreed, sitting on a cushioned bench beside her. There had been no need for either of them to stay in a hospital, seeing as how their son had been born from a machine and not from Gandhari's body. Dhritarashtra touched his wife's shoulder and asked, "Are you ready?"

"Yes." Holding the baby carefully, she slowly stood up, as did her husband. The crowd of servants, photographers, reporters, and cameramen milling in front of them fell silent. A few lone flashbulbs flashed audibly, and microphones hummed. The baby awoke and stirred slightly in Gandhari's arms, but made not a peep, as if sensing the solemnity of the moment.

Dhritarashtra leaned over and whispered a name into his infant son's ear.

"Duryodhana."

Two weeks later, the first of Duryodhana's many brothers was born - the one named Dusshasana. And for months and years afterward, more and more brothers were born, at first one every few days, and then one every few weeks, then one every few months. By the time that he turned six years old, Duryodhana had exactly ninety-nine younger brothers and a single sister, named Dusshala.

* * *

XII.

"Like this?" Duryodhana asked, his fingers clicking rapidly away at the funny, bumpy keyboard of his father's computer. "Uncle Bhisma is a great dumb prat," the computer read his typing back at him in its usual lilting, pleasant female voice.

"Now Duryodhana, why would you ever type something like that?" Dhritarashtra asked, reaching over his son's shoulder and fumbling for the delete key.

"Because it's true. Do you _know_ how much math homework he gave me yesterday?"

"And you're playing with Papa's computer and not doing your homework because...?"

"Like a king really needs to know long division." Duryodhana stabbed petulantly at the keyboard, and the computer obediently read back what he wrote. "L. L. L. L. L. L."

Dhritarashtra laughed. Duryodhana had always been fascinated by "Papa's special computer" and had always loved to run his hands over the strange, bumpy keys on its keyboard. But Dhritarashtra had not let him play with the computer's word-processing program until today. "Is there a way to make it stop talking?" Duryodhana asked.

"Well, then it would be just like your computer, wouldn't it?"

"How can you write anything if it's always telling the whole world everything that you write in it?"

Dhritarashtra leaned over toward his son and whispered into his ear, "That's why Papa always uses his headphones when he types on his computer."

"Oh." Dhritarashtra heard his son scratching his nose - a habit which indicated that he was deep in thought - and then he said, "What's that?"

Dhritarashtra was quiet for a moment, waiting for his son to remember that he couldn't see what he was pointing at. Then Duryodhana quickly elaborated, "That round black thing with all the lights inside of it."

"Ah, that." Dhritarashtra crossed the length of his study and carefully picked up the object in question, crossing back over toward his computer desk and handing it to his son. "That's a map of the known universe. It was my brother's."

"Uncle Vidura's?"

"No, my other brother... You haven't met him. He died a long time ago." Dhritarashtra forced himself to swallow the sudden lump in his throat. He had never been able to see the electronic map within the globe that his son was now holding, of course. But when he and Pandu had been about Duryodhana's age, Pandu would spend long evenings holding the globe in his lap and describing all of the shapes, sizes, and positions of the stars and galaxies to his brother.

Duryodhana was quiet for a moment, then he said, "I've never met anyone who died." He handed the globe back to his father. "It sounds like it would be sad."

"It is very sad." Dhritarashtra held the globe to his chest for a moment, but then Duryodhana was back to spinning himself around in the chair in front of his father's computer desk, and a moment later he stopped his spinning and pointed at something else enticing. "What's that?" he asked.

"Young man, you really should be doing your homework."

"But I wanna stay here," Duryodhana said, spinning in the chair again. "You're here."

Dhritarashtra suddenly turned away from his son, crossing back over to the other side of his study to place the electronic globe, so utterly useless to him, back in its base on the shelf where it belonged. "Papa's busy," he said, reluctantly, although it was true. He had been busy, listening to his computer read him a week's worth of electronic mail from his advisors and cabinet members and allies on other worlds, when Duryodhana had intruded upon his study and wriggled his way between his father and the keyboard, begging to be allowed to play with the computer.

"You're always busy," Duryodhana said, not poutily, unfortunately, but rather with a sort of resigned sadness that stabbed straight into Dhritarashtra's heart.

"I'll tell you what," Dhritarashtra said. "You can I can be busy together. You can bring your homework in here, and..." Dhritarashtra trailed off, perking his ears toward the door. Somebody was approaching the threshold of his study. It was Bhisma - Dhritarashtra recognized the way that he always knocked on any door. "Come in," he said.

Bhisma entered and bowed to Duryodhana. "Why, if it isn't my truant prince!"

"I was gonna do my homework!" Duryodhana said quickly. "I swear I was gonna! Papa told me to--"

"I know you were going to." Bhisma reached and out and absent-mindedly ruffled Duryodhana's hair. "Right now, though, I was actually sent to find you. Your mother wants to see you."

"Yes, sir." Duryodhana slipped off his father's endlessly entertaining swirling chair and ran out the door. Bhisma closed it behind him and then asked, quietly, "He wasn't bothering you, was he?"

"Never."

"I really do wish you could see him," Bhisma said. "That face! He'll grow up to be a ladykiller, mark my words. But then again," Bhisma continued with a chuckle, "he surely must have gotten that from his mother. Nobody in this family has ever been that handsome."

"I'm going to throw this book at you," Dhritarashtra threatened, his hand resting on the spine of a particularly thick and heavy volume.

"You wouldn't beat and batter a senile old man, now would you?"

"You wanted to see me about something?" Dhritarashtra asked, in effect stating the obvious.

"Duryodhana will be nine years old in less than a week."

"I know." Dhritarashtra had already established a tradition of not making a terribly big fuss over any of his son's birthdays - there were simply too many of them throughout the year for any sort of elaborate celebrations to be practical. But nevertheless, he had been mulling over ideas for a gift for Duryodhana for the last several weeks. Dhritarashtra wondered if that was what Bhisma had come to him to discuss.

"I'd like to see him start learning the, er, gentlemanly arts," Bhisma said instead.

Dhritarashtra was confused. "But he's known how to handle a eighteen-piece place setting since he was six. And he knows how to bow and address his elders. He doesn't even pick his nose in public anymore. Which is more than I can say for his brother Sama."

"Not those sorts of gentlemanly arts, but, rather..."

Suddenly Dhritarashtra saw where this was going. "You mean, war games?"

"He should at the very least know how to handle bow and a sword, how to fire a rifle, how to--"

"What silly, useless nonsense."

"So is harpooning fish, but, it's a tradition, Your Majesty."

"He's already harpooned his first redfin, I think that's quite enough useless tradition for one prince."

"I think it would be good for him," Bhisma said, rather quickly.

Dhritarashtra raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Do you remember when we took him out harpooning? He loved it. Because he was good at it. I put a harpoon in his hands for the first time, and he handled it like a seasoned professional. I have a hunch that he'll be an outstanding fencer. And I think..." Bhisma took a deep breath, then apparently decided to take the plunge. "I think that it would be good for him to have something that he's, ah, good at."

"Oh," Dhritarashtra said softly.

"He's not like you," Bhisma went on, rather quietly. "He struggles with reading and writing, and math always seems to utterly befuddle him. He wasn't meant to be bookish, but he just... He tries so hard. Sometimes I feel like he's trying so hard to please me. But there's a lot of pressure on him, you know. The others are always following his lead and always looking up to him. And they're always asking him for help with something, a math problem or a book report, and he can't always, well, provide it."

"But he's not even nine years old."

"He's older than his years and you know it," Bhisma said, firmly. "Having younger brothers does that to a child. You were very much the same way."

Dhritarashtra was quiet for a moment, then he said, "Always trying to please you, is that it?"

"Yes."

"Come over here," Dhritarashtra said, gesturing toward the window that took up most of one of the walls of his study. Bhisma followed Dhritarashtra over toward the window, and Dhritarashtra pushed open a pane of glass, inviting the scent of summer grass and flowers into the room. The king's study overlooked a grassy hill that swooped down toward the palace gardens, dotted with trees and a small terraced pond in which several exotic, decidedly non-carnivorous fish swam. Today the hill was covered in laughter and the sounds of small feet stamping in the mud and grass; Dhritarashtra had been listening to his children play outside the window throughout his entire conversation with Bhisma. "What do you see?" he asked his uncle.

Bhisma leaned toward the window. "I see the Queen," he described for Dhritarashtra's benefit, "and about fifteen of your sons playing a game of tag. Duryodhana is sitting beside his mother, working on something... It looks like he has a book in his lap. A book and a pencil. The Queen is talking to him, but it doesn't look like he's listening. She's wearing a necklace of flowers. I would guess that your sons made that for her a bit earlier. The gardeners will have a fit when they find out what your sons have been doing to their flowerbeds."

Dhritarashtra chuckled at the thought.

"Why show me this?" Bhisma asked.

"Just so that you could see that they're good kids," Dhritarashtra said. He closed the window, sealing out the sound of laughter and running feet - for Bhisma, at least - and stepped away from the window.

Bhisma hesitated for a moment, then spoke again. "He's not very bright and he likely never will be," Bhisma said, bluntly. "Is he a nice kid? Yes. And a born leader - I've seen the way that he handles his younger brothers. He's just a little slow on the uptake - and he struggles and gets frustrated with complex concepts. He's just not very bright. But then again," Bhisma added, "neither was your brother, and he was a fine king. He had advisors like you, after all. Someday Duryodhana will have the same."

Dhritarashtra walked over toward his desk, and sat down in the twirling chair that Duryodhana loved so much. "And I remember a time when you told me that they were all demons and that I should destroy each and every one of them."

Bhisma was utterly silent.

"Thank you," Dhritarashtra said.

"For what?"

"For being honest. I wanted to hear what you thought of him." Suddenly he smiled and said, "That's it, then. I know what to give him for his birthday next week."

"What?"

"His grandfather's sword."

"Your majesty?"

"I think you're right, Bhisma. There's so much pressure on him - he's growing up so fast - " Dhritarashtra held out his hands, and then he shrugged. "Swordplay may be useless and dangerous, but that at least makes it play, doesn't it? And Duryodhana could use some play. Besides, as you said," Dhritarashtra finished with a sigh, "It might be best for him to have a hobby that he is actually good at."

* * *

XIII.

An interruption of a cabinet meeting rarely happened except in the most dire emergencies. Which was why, when a harried-sounding Sanjaya burst into the meeting room and demanded the king's attention, Dhritarashtra's first panicked thought was that either a giant meteor had been discovered racing toward Hastinapura, or that Panchala had declared war, or that one of his sons had been eaten by a fish.

"It's your brother!" Sanjaya said.

For a moment, Dhritarashtra was dumbfounded, utterly baffled. "Vidura is right here," he said, as beside him, Vidura echoed helpfully, "Right here."

"Your other brother," Sanjaya gasped, "on the voice comm - we can bring a receiver in here if you'd like, Your Majesty--"

Dhritarashtra was still confused. "Pandu is dead," he said, for lack of anything better to say.

"Is Lord Pandu still alive?" the Minister of Health demanded to know. Immediately, the entire cabinet was abuzz, Vidura was standing up hurriedly and shouting something, and Dhritarashtra said again, more to himself than to anybody else, "But Pandu is dead--"

"Your Majesty!" Sanjaya shouted over the uproar in the room. "The connection is from a remote area and highly unstable--!"

"Coming," Dhritarashtra said, instantly fighting his way through the crowd even as the calmer, more rational part of his brain kept quietly insisting that Pandu was dead, Pandu was dead, Pandu was dead, there was no way that he could have survived for all of these years, he surely must have died at least a decade ago--

"Your Majesty," somebody said, placing a comm receiver in Dhritarashtra's hand. Somebody else was pushing the crowd of Ministers away from him, and yet another aide was saying, "This way, Your Majesty--"

Dhritarashtra followed the aide for a few steps, his trembling hand clutching the receiver he had been handed, holding it down at his side, terrified of what he might hear if he brought the receiver up to his ear. _Is this a call from beyond the grave?_ he thought, thinking of the late-night horror movies that his sons liked to watch on the media console.

"We'll wait outside, Your Majesty," another aide suddenly said, and that was when Dhritarashtra realized that he had been brought into another room - and then left alone, in privacy. A door closed. Dhritarashtra swallowed, and then slowly brought the receiver up to his ear.

"Do I have to call you 'Your Majesty' now?" a familiar voice asked from deep within the receiver.

"Pandu. Pandu!" Dhritarashtra clapped a hand to his mouth, suddenly terrified that he would start blubbering like a child. "Is - is it really you?"

"What, do I have a clone that I should know about?"

"Are you dead?" Dhritarashtra suddenly asked.

"Yes. I'm a ghost and I'm coming to for your sooooooooooul."

"This isn't funny!" Dhritarashtra hissed, clutching the receiver so hard that his knuckles turned white. "I thought that you were dead! We all thought you were dead! How could you have survived with that--?!"

"Well, I'm still alive, at least for a little while longer," Pandu said brightly. "Sorry to disappoint."

"It's been fifteen years!" Dhritarashtra almost shouted into the receiver. He wasn't sure whether he was angry or overjoyed or terrified to be hearing his brother's voice again - especially after he had long since finished the painful process of grieving for his brother's death. "If you've been alive, why haven't you - why haven't you called, or written, or something?"

"Exile, remember? I'm not allowed to have any contact with any of you."

"Then why are you calling me now?!"

"Because I'm not in exile anymore!" Pandu laughed. He seemed to be immensely enjoying his brother's reactions to all of this. "Guess where I'm calling from? Okay, I'll give you a hint. It starts with a 'gas' and ends with a 'station' and it's seven hundred clicks from where you are right now."

"I'm not following you--"

"I'm coming _home_."

"Why?" Dhritarashtra asked, now beyond baffled. "Are you cured? Did it - did it - what do they call it? - did it all go into remission?"

"...No."

"Then why--?"

"I don't think I have much time left," Pandu suddenly said, all trace of joking in his voice gone. "And there's something that I have to do before I go. There's someone... Oh, I can't tell you this right now. Not like this. Not over the comm lines in a gas station in the middle of Godless nowhere. Listen, let me tell you this. Something absolutely marvelous happened to us--"

" 'Us'?"

"Kunti and Madri and I."

"They haven't left you yet? After fifteen years of exile in the wilderness?"

"Har, har, very funny. Just for that, I'm definitely not going to tell you anything right now." Pandu instantly seemed to brighten up again. "You just wait. I'll be back at the palace by this evening. And I have the most amazing, wonderful surprise. You're so not going to believe it."

"Wait a minute, Pandu--"

"Oh, balls, I don't have another coin for this thing," Pandu suddenly said. "Listen, my paid time is up, but--"

Then the comm went dead, and Dhritarashtra was left with nothing but an unpleasant buzz in his ear and a mechanical voice telling him that his caller's time had expired. Dhritarashtra slowly lowered the receiver from his ear.

_I have to tell Vidura_, he thought, fumbling toward the door of whatever room he had been left in.

There were voices on the other side of the door - a whole crowd of people. Dhritarashtra opened the door and, instantly ignored the dozens of questions being shouted at him, pushed his way through the aides and ministers and the first few of no doubt what would soon be many reporters who had already managed to sneak into this wing of the palace. "Vidura!" he barked. "Where is Vidura?"

"Right here," Vidura suddenly said. Then, utterly oblivious to the dozens of pairs of eyes watching them, Dhritarashtra threw his arms around his startled brother and, hugging him fiercely, said, "Pandu's alive and he's coming home. Tonight." Dhritarashtra realized finally that there were tears streaming down his cheeks.

"You're not joking?"

"Would I joke about something like this?" Dhritarashtra sniffled.

Vidura was silent for a moment, digesting this news. Then he said, "Pity he couldn't have come back a week earlier. Then he would've been here for Duryodhana's thread ceremony."

"Duryodhana!" Dhritarashtra suddenly gasped. "I have to tell him about - I never told Pandu about--! Do you think he knows? I mean, he has been living in the wilderness for fifteen years, but you'd think in all that time he might have seen at least one newspaper or--"

"Then it will just have to be a marvelous surprise for him, won't it?" Vidura said. Then he seemed to reconsider, and said, "Best not to bring out all the children at once, I would think. The shock wouldn't be good for him. I mean, there are one hundred and one of them. I'm sure he'll be very surprised."

* * *

XIV.

"There are a lot of people with cameras," Duryodhana described helpfully as he led his father past the throngs of reporters and cameramen roped off to either side of them. "And there's another carpet on top of the usual one. It's bright red."

Dhritarashtra heard a flurry of cameras snapping, and he squeezed his son's hand more tightly than was strictly necessary. "Smile and wave," he whispered, although he knew that Duryodhana was probably already doing just that - he was a natural in front of crowds. And very photogenic, as many had often commented to Dhritarashtra.

"Don't see why we have to be all dressed up in these stupid robes," Dusshasana complained from a step behind his father.

"Because this is a special occasion," Duryodhana, who did not at all mind dressing up in elaborate princely robes, explained firmly.

Dhritarashtra heard the rest of his sons whispering among themselves as they followed along behind Dusshasana. Gandhari and Dusshala would be bringing up the rear of their impromptu procession in a matter of moments. Dhritarashtra wished briefly that Gandhari could have been at the front of the line with him. But Duryodhana holding his hand made him feel safe enough, at least.

"There's a door," Duryodhana said. "Do I keep going?"

"Yes," Dhritarashtra said, and Duryodhana pushed through a heavy wooden door and stepped into a broad, open lobby that was blessedly free of milling reporters and flashing cameras. "In here, in here," Dhritarashtra said, ushering the rest of his sons through the door. He could hear Duryodhana running back and forth, steering the younger ones this way and that and threatening to punch Sama, who was picking his nose again. Last came Gandhari, who pushed Dusshala gently in front of her, closed the door behind her, and breathed a sigh of relief. "We have to go back through the lions, don't we?" she said.

"That's the idea. Privacy now; smiling for the cameras later."

"HEAD COUNT!" Duryodhana suddenly shouted.

The children began counting off, and when Dusshala finished by shouting "Ninety-nine!" with a knowing giggle, Gandhari groaned and muttered, "We lost two."

"Where?"

"They could be anywhere between here and the east wing of the palace."

"It's my fault," Duryodhana interjected. "I should have been-- I can go back and---"

"We don't have time," Dhritarashtra said, hearing a commotion from the other side of the lobby, where another door stood, closed and for a few moments at least, still silent. "Wait here," he told his children, "stay with Mama until I tell you to come forward. Except you, Duryodhana. You come with me."

Dhritarashtra started forward, clutching his cane, as Duryodhana followed nervously just a few steps behind him. Dhritarashtra tried to walk in as stately a manner as he possibly could, but when he heard pounding footsteps on the other side of the far door, he simply threw his cane aside and broke into a reckless run. He barely had time to register the sound of the door being slammed open and the rush of air that accompanied this when Pandu was suddenly tackling him head-on, throwing his arms around his brother and gasping "I missed you so much, so much, so much!" He showered Dhritarashtra's cheeks with kisses.

Dhritarashtra squeezed his little brother as tightly as he could and whirled him around, laughing. Well, maybe there was nothing so very funny about the fact that Pandu was as light as feather and the way that Dhritarashtra could feel the barest hint of his ribs from beneath his skin and clothes. But then Pandu grasped a handful of his brother's hair and gave a healthy tug, gasping, "You've got GRAY hair!" as if this were the most astounding discovery in the history of Hastinapura, and Dhritarashtra laughed again, all thoughts of Pandu's unsettling lightness forgotten. Then, as if on cue, both he and Pandu began babbling at each other at once.

"Where's Vidura?"

"Back that way, talking to the paparazzi jackals."

"We snuck in the back way--"

"I knew you would--"

"I think I gave the guards a heart attack, one of them actually clutched at his chest when he saw us!"

"Where are Kunti and--?"

"--Coming in a minute, oh, you're not going to believe this, we have the most wonderful-- Geh?"

Dhritarashtra blinked, momentarily startled by his brother's uncharacteristic lapse into silence. Then from behind him, Dhritarashtra heard Duryodhana say, "Hello, sir."

Pandu said absolutely nothing for a long, long moment. Then he suddenly clutched at the front of Dhritarashtra's robes and asked, in a strange, hoarse voice, "Who is that?"

"Ah." Dhritarashtra could feel his involuntary grin stretching from ear to ear. "This is my eldest son, Duryodhana."

"H-Hello sir," Duryodhana repeated, although he sounded much less sure of himself this time around. Dhritarashtra wondered what sort of expression his son could see on Pandu's face.

Pandu suddenly grasped both sides of Dhritarashtra's face in his hands and hissed, "How old is he?!" The question sounded urgent, even panicked.

"Thirteen," Dhritarashtra answered, bewildered, and beginning to feel a sick knot of dread forming in his stomach. This was not at all the way that he had imagined this moment playing out in his mind. "He had his thread ceremony last week."

"Last... week?" Pandu began trembling, his hands slowly falling away from Dhritarashtra's face. "Oh, no. Oh, no." His voice suddenly sounded muffled, and Dhritarashtra realized that he had buried his face in his own hands. "This can't be happening. Yudhisthira turned thirteen last week, too."

"Who?"

"Who's all that behind you?" Pandu suddenly asked, and before Dhritarashtra could answer, he heard another voice - a child's voice, coming from somewhere behind Pandu - asking, "Who are all these people, Papa?"

Pandu grasped his brother's arm and said, shakily, "We need to talk. Now."

* * *

To be continued. 


	2. Chapter 01: Hastinapura

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti and Steelehearts for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER ONE: HASTINAPURA

* * *

Yudhisthira sat very still, concentrating on keeping his back straight and his legs together, as he had been taught. He folded his hands in his lap and allowed only his fingers to fidget, discreetly. He had never been in a place like this before - a place with plush velvet carpets and windows that soared four stories tall and gold and silver on the walls. He had never been surrounded by so many people before, not all at once. It was more than a little unnerving - especially since those people were all, each and every one of them, staring at him.

The silence behind their blank, hostile stares was even more unnerving. The fact that they all appeared to be Yudhisthira's age or younger did nothing to make Yudhisthira feel any better. There had been adults in this place a few moments ago, but then the adults had gone, ostensibly to discuss something very urgent and dire. The children had been left alone, in silence.

Yudhisthira's fingers fidgeted restlessly in his lap. He was painfully aware of how he looked, especially compared to these princes. He had no gold jewelry or fancy robes, and his hair had gone far too long without a decent trimming. Yudhisthira turned his eyes away from the other princes who were staring at him (it felt like there were a hundred of them!) and looked for something, anything, to catch his attention. His eyes flickered briefly to his brother Bhima, who was sitting at his side, looking just as uncomfortable. Cradled in Bhima's lap, baby Arjuna, their youngest brother, dozed lightly, sometimes opening his eyes to gaze lazily around at the opulence around him, then yawning and closing them again. He alone seemed unfazed by any of his surroundings.

Yudhisthira's eyes flicked back toward the crowd of princes gathered on the far side of the lobby, and yes, they were still staring at him as if he were some sort of horrifying yet fascinating insect that they had found crawling up one of the walls. None of them had said a word since the adults had left them. Yudhisthira cast his eyes back down into his lap and prayed silently and fervently for a hole to open up in the ground beneath him and swallow him whole. He started mentally running through the names of every god and goddess that he knew, hoping that one of them would hear his prayer and strike him dead on the spot. That would at least save him the pain of--

Suddenly, he heard footsteps. Yudhisthira looked up and saw one of the princes approaching him and his brothers, striding across the lobby confidently, his jaw set and determined. The other princes watched him with wide eyes, as the hush in the room grew deeper and more expectant.

Yudhisthira watched the strange prince approaching. He was tall and handsome and wore a gold earring in one ear - a sign that he had completed his thread ceremony. The prince came to a halt squarely in front of Bhima, clasped his hands, bowed, and said, "Welcome."

"Hi," said Bhima, although his forehead was creased with bafflement.

The prince straightened up and held out his hand. "I'm Duryodhana," he said. "You don't have to call me 'Your Majesty' if you don't want to," he added generously.

Bhima shifted Arjuna so that he was resting on only one of his hands, then held out his free hand to grasp Duryodhana's. "Bhima," he said. Then he added, with a nod of his head in Yudhisthira's direction, "And that's my older brother."

Duryodhana suddenly jerked his hand away from Bhima's. His eyes flickered back and forth between Bhima and Yudhisthira. Now his face was a perfect mirror of the confusion that had been on Bhima's face a moment earlier. "Oh," he said. "But I thought..." He trailed off, unsure how to proceed.

Yudhisthira sighed. Perhaps this was only to be expected. Bhima was two years his junior, but a full head taller than Yudhisthira was. Yudhisthira finally raised his head to meet Duryodhana's gaze, forced out a nervous smile, and said, "I'm--"

That was when Arjuna, who apparently had woken up fully a few short moments ago, decided to open his mouth and wail.

Nearly everyone in the room jumped - the baby's cry had cut through the nervous silence like a knife. Bhima immediately turned to Yudhisthira and asked desperately, "Now what?"

"I don't know, maybe he's hungry--"

"He just had a bottle, the stupid pumpkin--"

"Try rocking him - Not like that, Bhima, don't SHAKE him--!"

"This is rocking him, I'm ROCKING him--!"

"Oh, hush," Duryodhana suddenly said, snatching the screaming baby right out of Bhima's arms. Before Bhima could protest, Duryodhana had given the baby three quick rocks, stroked his head, and whispered, "Hush now, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay," three times over. Arjuna abruptly ceased crying, fell silent for a moment, then raised his chubby arms toward Duryodhana's face and waved them around, laughing. "Well, hello there," Duryodhana said, tapping at Arjuna's nose with his finger.

Bhima's jaw dropped. "How did you...?"

"I've had a lot of baby brothers," Duryodhana said, handing the baby back to Bhima. Arjuna laughed again, then began contentedly sucking his thumb. "What's his name?" Duryodhana asked.

"Arjuna."

" 'Stupid pumpkin' works, too," Bhima added.

"Bhima--"

"What? He's round like a pumpkin, and he's stupid."

"He's a baby," Yudhisthira countered.

Duryodhana suddenly leaned forward - very far forward - and squinted at Yudhisthira's face. Yudhisthira started, but did not cringe away from this intrusive examination. "What are you doing here?" Duryodhana asked, bluntly.

"Papa brought us here," Yudhisthira said, licking his lips nervously. "Because... Because he told me that I'm to study to become the king."

The room descended immediately into a deep, oppressive silence. Nobody even dared to breathe.

Suddenly Duryodhana pulled away from Yudhisthira, straightened up, threw back his head, and laughed. "That's won't happen," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Why not?" Bhima demanded angrily.

"Because I'm the Crown Prince. And my papa's the king." Duryodhana snorted derisively. "What, have you been living in a cave?"

Bhima and Yudhisthira exchanged glances, then Yudhisthira answered, with as much hauteur as he could muster, "Actually, the cave smelled much nicer than this awful palace of yours, thank you very much."

* * *

II.

"How could you DO this?!" Dhritarashtra asked, punctuated his words with angry flailings of his arms, apparently not particularly minding that he had already managed to slap Vidura twice in the face by doing so. "You can't just waltz in here after being gone for fifteen years and expect me to crown your son the next king--"

"I didn't know that you would have a son, too--"

"Didn't know? _Didn't know_?! YOU were the one who told me to get married before you left! You were the one who practically told me to go forth and procreate--"

"I never said anything like 'Go forth and procreate--' "

"Actually," Vidura pointed out quietly, "You told him 'It's up to you to produce an heir to the throne.' Your exact words."

"SHUT UP, VIDURA," the other two snapped at him. Dhritarashtra grabbed Pandu by the shoulders and demanded angrily, "And how DARE you bring a son into the world when you knew full well that you wouldn't be around to--" Dhritarashtra abruptly froze, his eyes widening with a sudden realization. Then he began shaking Pandu's shoulders and shouting, "HOW IN THE FIVE HELLS did you have KIDS anyway?! I thought your balls were--"

"Er," Pandu said, suddenly flushing bright crimson.

"They're devakin," Kunti said, stepping forward from the corner of the room where she had been standing silently, with Madri at her side.

"I thought so," Bhisma said quietly. He turned toward Kunti and asked quietly, "All three of them?"

She nodded, her eyes blazing with both pride and defiance.

"And they're sons born of you?" Gandhari asked coldly.

Kunti nodded again.

"Then they're not Lord Pandu's sons," Gandhari said, "not truly."

"Legally they are," Kunti said through gritted teeth. "In every sense that matters, they are."

"She's right," Bhisma told Gandhari, who immediately shot him a glare cold enough to freeze water, even through her blindfold. Then he turned back toward Kunti, who at least looked as if she were not fervently wishing him a messy and prolonged death at that very moment, and asked, "But how can one woman bear three devakin?"

Kunti suddenly looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes.

"A devakin child is a rare blessing," Bhisma pressed on. "I've never heard of the gods blessing a single woman with more than one devakin child, let alone three."

Kunti took a deep breath, then answered, her cheeks flushed bright red, "I know a mantra... A mantra that summons a god and grants me a devakin every time I utter it."

"Oh, she knows a_mantra_!" Gandhari exclaimed, throwing up her arms. "How convenient! That must make it so very easy for her to undermine her husband any time she feels a little itch for--"

"Please," Dhritarashtra said firmly. Gandhari fell silent, but everyone in the room could practically feel her seething.

"I asked her to do it," Pandu said frankly, gingerly extracting the front of his shirt from his brother's white-knuckled grasp. "It was so lonely and quiet out in the forest, and-- and-- I'd always dreamed of having a son of my own, I couldn't bear the thought of finishing my life without ever having held my own son in my arms. And when Kunti told me that she knew that mantra... I asked her to have a son from Dharma."

"Dharma!"

"So that he would be born a wise and just king," Pandu said, sounding miserable.

"So Yudhisthira is the son of Dharma?" Bhisma asked, thoughtfully.

Dhritarashtra swallowed, a sound which revealed a the nervous dry click in his throat. "So you actually _created_ your first son to be a king?! And you never once stopped to think that I might have--"

"It wasn't like that--"

"You thought that I wouldn't be able to get married? That no woman would ever--"

"I would NEVER think something like that!" Pandu protested, shocked.

"Yes," Dhritarashtra agreed, "It does sound like there was a startling lack of thinking on your part."

"I know, I know!" Pandu moaned, clutching at his own hair. "And by the time that Yudhisthira was a year old I thought that it wasn't fair for him to be raised all alone, so I asked Kunti for another child, and she..."

"Vayu," Kunti said, holding up her chin defiantly.

"The wind?!"

"Bhima's father," Kunti went on. "Because I knew that Yudhisthira would need someone strong to always support him."

"You witch," Gandhari spat. "You were planning for him to take over the throne from the start, weren't you!"

"What did you just call me?" Kunti asked, her voice low and dangerous.

"Kunti, please," Madri pleaded, reaching for Kunti's arm.

"You heard what she called me!"

"Dhritarashtra," Gandhari snapped, daring to address her husband by name, "I don't care if he's your brother, you've promised the throne to Duryodhana since his birth and you can't--"

"We promised our Yudhisthira too--"

"You can't say that Yudhisthira would make a better king than Duryodhana just because he's a devakin--"

"Nobody ever said such a thing--"

"But--"

"_Enough_," Bhisma suddenly said, stepping angrily between Dhritarashtra and Pandu and pushing them both apart, forcefully. He then turned his head toward Pandu and asked, "Why did you come back to us, Pandu?"

"Because of my sons," Pandu answered. "Because I know that Yudhisthira must be the next king of our world - because it was what he was born to do. And because a king cannot be raised in a cave in the wilderness, far away from his subjects. Because I want Yudhisthira to have the type of education that he can only have here. Because I want Yudhisthira to meet and interact with other human beings. He's never even met anybody outside of his immediate family before today. And... Because of me. Because I've been getting headaches, and because I've been getting thinner, and because I want to know that Yudhisthira will be here and safe and taken care of before I have to leave him."

Kunti reached out and squeezed Pandu's hand.

Dhritarashtra shook his head, slowly. "I've been telling Duryodhana since the day that he was born that he was to be the next king. Everyone has been telling him that. Pandu, you don't know - you can't even begin to imagine - how much he's studied, how hard he's worked, toward that goal. He's a good kid and he's been focusing his entire life on preparing to take my place someday. You can't just ask me to rip that away from him. He's my son."

"Yudhisthira has been studying, too," Pandu said quickly. "He's amazingly bright - so smart you wouldn't even believe it - we didn't have much with us out in the wilderness, but we taught him how to read and write and you should _see_ that kid handle a bow..." Pandu's voice trailed off, and he finally glanced up and met his brother's sightless eyes, sighing miserably. "I really mucked this up, didn't I?"

"Yes. Yes, you did."

"I always dreamed that I would live long enough to introduce my son to you, someday," Pandu said, his eyes growing dangerously shiny. "I thought that it would be the happiest moment of my life."

Dhritarashtra sighed and rubbed his temples. "I would have hoped likewise," he said, "If I hadn't given you up for dead fifteen years ago. I never thought-- I don't think that any of us expected--"

"--That I would live this long?"

"...Yes."

Pandu then looked up at Bhisma. "What should we do?"

Everyone around Bhisma suddenly fell silent, waiting for his decision.

Bhisma rubbed at his temples for a moment, stalling for time. Then, reluctantly, he knew that he had to make a decision, and so he spoke, and prayed silently that his words were the right words. "Both of my nephews," he said, placing one hand on Dhritarashtra's shoulder and one hand on Pandu's shoulder, "have been crowned the king of this planet. Both of them have a son in line for the throne - either son born, unfortunately, in the exact same year at the exact same date. One was born a human and has proven himself worthy of the title of Crown Prince. The other was born of a god and has not yet had a chance to prove himself worthy of anything. Therefore, it only seems fair that Prince Yudhisthira be given that chance."

"You mean," Vidura said slowly, "you're going to pit them against each other?"

"No," Bhisma said. "No, this will not be a competition. But nevertheless, both Duryodhana and Yudhisthira are to be raised and educated as if they were both already chosen to become the future king. And in the end, when they are both old enough and have both had ample opportunities to show us all their strengths and weaknesses, only one will be chosen."

The room was hushed and quiet for a moment. Then Madri said, very softly, "That is a competition. And it sounds cruel. After all those years of work, only one of them will become a king..."

"It may be cruel, perhaps," Bhisma said, "But it is also the only fair method of choosing that I can suggest."

"And who will make the final decision?" Gandhari asked. "None of us here are impartial in the matter--"

"Vidura and I," Bhisma said quickly, "as well as the High Council of Brahmins and any other judges that we deem worthy."

"I can't make a decision like that," Vidura protested.

"You must."

Vidura fell silent, but his face was long and worried.

Pandu took a deep, trembling breath. "I think... Yes. That does seem fair."

"Duryodhana has an advantage," Bhisma felt it only fair to point out. "He's advanced further in his studies that Yudhisthira has, he knows how to handle himself among polite society, and the public already knows and adores him."

"Yudhisthira's a genius," Kunti said, immodestly. "He'll breeze through his studies. And just let us give him a haircut and some proper clothing, and get him out in public. He'll have as many swooning fangirls as your pretty little prince does."

"What about Bhima?"

"Bhima knows how to behave himself," Kunti said, tersely. "Most of the time."

"I'll handle Bhima. And Yudhisthira. I can give them both all of the extra tutoring that they need, I promise," Bhisma said quickly. "Now agree and shake on it," he told both his nephews, sternly.

Dhritarashtra and Pandu shook hands. "I'm so sorry about all of this," Pandu said, his voice shaking. "So sorry."

Dhritarashtra suddenly wrapped his arms around his brother and hugged him fiercely, whispering, "You're here and you're alive, aren't you? There's that to be thankful for. There's always that."

Pandu laughed and returned his brother's hug with equal enthusiasm. "I missed you so much."

"Now," Bhisma said, sounding relieved, "I hate to interrupt such a heartwarming moment, but, Pandu, your sons--"

"Yes?"

"You know that all devakin have to be registered with the Council of Brahmins and tested for Gifts. When they're less than a year old."

"Er--"

"Yes, I rather thought that you hadn't done that."

"Exile," Pandu said, pulling himself away from Dhritarashtra's embrace, "which means that any contact with civilization is absolutely forbidden, remember?"

Bhisma sighed. "I'll take them tomorrow morning, then," he said. "Meanwhile, you all have something that you should probably be explaining to your sons right about now."

* * *

III.

Dhritarashtra had expected that Duryodhana would not react to this news well. He was not disappointed.

"HIM?!" Duryodhana shouted, accompanying himself with a whistle of air and a soft thud, the sound of him throwing a pillow angrily across the room. "That ugly, smelly kid who crawled out of a cave?! You're handing my crown over to HIM?!"

"No," Dhritarashtra said calmly, "that hasn't been decided yet. When you two are old enough, a choice will be made--"

"But I'M supposed to be king! You PROMISED me I would be king! I'M the one who's working hard every day and studying my brains out and-- and-- and now you're going to take that all AWAY from me?!"

Dhritarashtra winced. For a prince who was supposedly not very bright, Duryodhana seemed to have a knack for saying exactly the one thing that he needed to say to hurt someone the most. "Duryodhana, please--"

"Please, what?!" Duryodhana practically snarled.

"Think of your little brothers. Think of Dusshasana."

This, at least, made Duryodhana pause. "Yeah?" he asked, cautiously.

"I know that you would do anything for them," Dhritarashtra said, reaching out to touch his son's shoulder. "Because you're a very good big brother. And I'm very proud of you because of it."

Duryodhana said nothing.

"Pandu is my brother," Dhritarashtra said, "but he was the king before I ever was. His son has every bit as much a claim to the throne as you do - at least according to our laws. And I can't deny the son of my brother at least a chance, just a chance mind you, to prove that he is worthy to fulfill that claim."

"But your brother ran away," Duryodhana said. "Dusshasana would never do something like that to me." Then he sniffled and said, "You promised me. You promised."

"Duryodhana--"

"Leave me alone," Duryodhana said, shrugging his father's hand off his shoulder. "Please."

Dhritarashtra stood up slowly, and turned away from his son. The two of them had been sitting in Duryodhana's bedroom, and now Dhritarashtra sensed that their conversation was finished. He started to walk away from Duryodhana, paused, then turned around and said sternly, "You're thirteen years old already. That means that you're a man. So, be a man, Duryodhana. I know that you deserve this crown more than anybody else in the world. So be a man, and prove it to the world."

Then he left, leaving his son alone with the sound of his own teary sniffles.

Gandhari was waiting for him outside. "That didn't sound like it went very well at all."

"Let him get some sleep. He'll have a clearer head in the morning."

"I doubt it," Gandhari said sharply. "A father's betrayal is hardly something that a son can shrug off so easily, even a son as strong as Duryodhana."

"I did not--"

"Yes, you did. You betrayed him tonight, in every way that matters."

"...Have you talked to Dusshasana and the others?"

"Yes, although the little ones didn't seem to understand what was going on."

Dhritarashtra sighed, wearily. "What have we done?" he asked. As he had expected, his wife did not answer him.

* * *

IV.

Yudhisthira did not like this. First, he had been taken by the hand and led through a hallway filled with people, many of whom had flashing cameras that blinded his eyes, all of whom seemed to first gasp in awe and then start shouting angry questions when they saw him. Then, Bhima and Arjuna had been taken away by his mothers. Then he and his father had walked through a brightly-lit, gilded, dazzling and terrifying palace for a very long time until they were finally led by some servants into a strange room filled with couches and cushions and a large, elegant four-poster bed.

"You can sleep here, tonight," Yudhisthira's father said. Then he sat Yudhisthira down on a couch and said, very quietly, "But first, we need to talk."

Yudhisthira cast his eyes down in his lap, hoping that his father wouldn't see his lower lip trembling.

"Do you know why I brought you here?" his father asked.

"So that I could be a king..."

"Yes. Well. Well... Right now, we aren't sure if you can be a king."

"I know. Duryodhana told me."

"But Duryodhana might not become the next king, either. One of you two will become the next king, but only one. Since nobody around here knows how wonderful you are yet, they're going to give you a chance to prove that you're worthy of becoming a king." Yudhisthira's father shook his shoulders gently, grinning at him, trying to cheer him up. "All you have to do is show all these people what a great king you'll make. And then you'll be the king. All right?"

"What about Duryodhana?"

"He'll be trying just as hard as you are to show what a great king he can be. You'll just have to... You'll have to be a better king than he is."

_Then Duryodhana will surely hate me,_ Yudhisthira understood instantly. But he nodded and said, "Yes, Father."

"Well, then." Yudhisthira's father gave his shoulder one last encouraging pat, then he stood up and stretched wearily. "I'd best be going to bed, now. I suggest that you do the same. You've got a big day tomorrow." Then he left, and Yudhisthira was alone.

The couch that he was sitting on, Yudhisthira suddenly realized, smelled unfamiliar, and terrible. He brushed his long, overgrown bangs out of his eyes and frowned. Now, what? Was he supposed to actually sleep on top of that monstrous, four-postered thing in the center of the room?

Before Yudhisthira could spend a moment more stewing over his unpleasant lot in life, however, the doors to his room burst open. "Your Highness!" a strange man wearing white and red robes, with his hair in a ponytail and a prim mustache on his lip, exclaimed jovially. He led a procession of men and women in crisp white uniforms into the room. Yudhisthira stared at them all, his eyes widening with what could only be described as utter terror. "Do not fear, Your Highness, we are here to serve you," the ponytailed man said with a bow. Then he straightened up and clapped his hands, once, sharply. And then the men and women in white uniforms fell upon Yudhisthira.

One tugged off Yudhisthira's shirt, but before he could shout a protest at this indignity, another was wrapping a soft, furry robe around his body. Two more suddenly appeared and ushered him toward the back of the room, where a fifth appeared to open a door in front of him. Then Yudhisthira was being pushed into a marble-tiled chamber filled with clouds of steam and realized that his feet were sliding toward a pool in the floor filled with warm, swirling water. He hissed in pain as his toes dipped into the edge of the water.

"Is the temperature unpleasant, Your Highness?" the man with the ponytail inquired.

"It's too hot!"

Again, that sharp, single clap; again, figures in white scrambling through the clouds of steam, turning dials and flipping switches. Yudhisthira dipped his toe in the water again; "It's much better, thank you," he said. And then he was promptly stripped of his robe and pushed into the water.

He shouted in protest and was rewarded with a lungful of searing hot water. Yudhisthira gasped and spluttered, and then was suddenly being held upright. Two young women wearing very, very little in the way of coverings over their breasts and hips were in the water, with him. But they were not there for pleasure, or for play. One briskly swept Yudhisthira's wet hair off his forehead and then gathered it in her hands, attacking it with a pair of scissors. The other had a grainy sponge in one hand and a bar of soap in the other, and set to work vigorously (and painfully) scrubbing every inch of Yudhisthira's skin in a very business-like manner.

"Hey, hey!" Yudhisthira protested, as severed locks of his own hair began showering down around his shoulders. "I can do that myself--"

"Apparently not," the woman with the sponge said, with a teasing, coy smile. "Look at all this dirt!"

"I'vebeenlivinginacave," Yudhisthira mumbled apologetically. Then he gasped and stuttered, "N-N-Not down th-th-there!"

She was keeping her eyes politely averted from where her hands were working her sponge, but she still answered Yudhisthira smartly, "Believe me, Your Highness, you need a good scrubbing down here more than you need it anywhere else."

The other girl laughed as she clipped off the last of Yudhisthira's split ends. "If you're going to be a king, Your Highness, you might as well learn to enjoy the perks and privileges."

"But this isn't--"

Before Yudhisthira could finish, however, he was being hauled out of the water and wrapped in his robe again, and then ushered out of his private little bathing room. In an instant he was back in his bedroom, and being pushed forcefully into a chair positioned in front of a large mirror. One of the girls from the bath sauntered in behind him, now wearing a robe over her otherwise scant coverings. "If you hold still, Your Highness, this will be done before you can blink your eyes." She then set to work blasting Yudhisthira's hair and face with hot air blown from a tool that looked like a squat, shortened version of something Yudhisthira's father would use to hunt birds with, while at the same time painfully pulling out every single tangle and snarl in his hair with a tiny, ineffectual comb. Then, mercifully, she finished whatever she was doing with hot-air gun, and began combing and brushing Yudhisthira's hair back from his face. "There," she said, finally finished. "Don't you look handsome?"

"I suppose… Thank you."

When everything was said and done, another servant presented Yudhisthira with a glass of fresh water, and then the ordeal was over.

"Pleasant dreams, Your Highness," the man with the ponytail said, bowing low as he and the rest of his troupe of servants left Yudhisthira's room, closing the doors behind them.

Yudhisthira sighed and slipped out of his robe, fumbling to put on the nightclothes that the servants had left out for him. At least they had finally gotten clued in to the fact that he was capable of dressing and undressing himself, and that he would rather do just exactly that - himself.

Yudhisthira circled his room, turning off every lamp that he could find. There were so many of them! And some of the complicated switches utterly baffled him at first - this lamp had a dial which only made the lamp grow dimmer or brighter as he turned it, another was controlled by a switch not on the lamp itself but located on a cord hanging behind the lamp. When Yudhisthira finally managed to click off the last of his lamps, he stood still for a moment, amazed that his room was not yet dark. A bright, persistent glow was filtering into the room, invading every crevice and shadow. Yudhisthira turned his head and saw that the source of this glow was coming from behind the curtains covering the tall windows on one side of his room. The curtains were thick and dark, but the light concealed behind them still managed to filter in around their edges and corners. Yudhisthira padded in his slippered feet over to the curtains, and hesitantly reached out and drew one aside. What he saw beyond the window made him gasp.

It was the city of Hastinapura, laid out before him like a carpet of glittering jewels. Everything was aglow - the buildings, the streets, the automobiles running in a steady stream along the roads around and beyond the palace, the flying machines lighting up the skies above. Then Yudhisthira turned his head toward the darkened sky, and his heart sank. He could see the pale moon floating in the sky above him, crisp and clear, which meant that there were no clouds in the sky, and yet... And yet, the stars were gone. Yudhisthira squinted as hard as he could, but he could not even see the polestar that his father had taught him and Bhima to use as a point of reference whenever they were out in the woods after dark. The sky was dull and lifeless, an expansive matte black emptiness, its stars having been swallowed up by the polluting glow of the city surrounding Yudhisthira.

Yudhisthira sighed and closed his curtains. This did little to change the amount of light filtering into his room. He found his way to his bed - it was as easy for him as if he had been walking in broad daylight. He pulled back the covers and crawled cautiously on top of the bed, then slowly tried to stretch himself out on top of it. It was no good. Whether he tried to lie on his stomach or his back or his side, he sank so far into the infuriatingly soft mattress beneath him that it felt as if he were being swallowed whole. With a shudder of revulsion, Yudhisthira finally gave up and slipped off the bed and onto the floor, pulling some of the covers with him. That was better, he thought, settling onto a comfortable position, curled up on the floor beside his bed.

Yudhisthira lay like that for a very long time, unable to sleep. His room was too bright. The sounds of traffic from the city below the palace thundered in his eardrums. He had no idea where Bhima and Arjuna had been taken. He had never even slept this far away from Bhima or his father or his mothers before, never in his life. He missed the sound of their breathing, the sound of insects singing in the woods at night, the sound of night winds rustling branches and leaves.

Yudhisthira finally fell asleep when the moon was already low in the sky outside his window. But he tossed and turned, plagued by vague and unpleasant dreams.

* * *

V.

Somebody was shaking Yudhisthira awake. "Your Highness - Your Highness!"

He sat up slowly and groaned. Everything was bright. There were unfamiliar faces all around him. "Wha...?"

"Your Highness, what are you doing on the floor?!"

"Better than the bed," Yudhisthira said, standing up shakily, his blankets still wrapped around his shoulders. Almost immediately, there were hands snatching his blankets away from him, more hands steering him this way and that, toward the bathroom where he had been last night--

"I can do that myself," he suddenly said, when someone started to forcefully peel his shirt off his back. The servants backed off respectfully and left Yudhisthira alone in the bathing room.

Left in a moment of blessed privacy, Yudhisthira peeled off his nightclothes and sank gratefully into the pool of hot, swirling water waiting for him. The temperature was not nearly as intolerable as he had found it last night, for some reason. The marble floors of the room were still painfully cold against his feet after he emerged from the bath waters, and the gold and silver gilding everywhere dazzled his eyes enough to make him feel dizzy. Still, he managed to finish his bath, wrap himself in a robe that someone had thoughtfully left out for him, and fumbled around the bathroom until he found a toothbrush and some paste to clean his teeth and tongue with. The artificial blue paste tasted terrible, and made Yudhisthira cough and gag. Once this unpleasant chore was done, Yudhisthira cautiously returned to his bedroom.

Thankfully, the crowd of servants that had awoken him was gone. His bed was made and the carpet looked as if it had actually been cleaned and vacuumed while he had been occupied in the bathroom. And lying on top of his freshly-made bed was another unpleasant surprise.

"I can't wear that," Yudhisthira said to nobody in particular.

He approached the unfamiliar clothes, cautiously, almost afraid that they would rear up and bite him. He reached out nervously and rested his fingertips, and then the palm of his hand, against the shirt - one of the three shirts, which looked as if they were to be worn in layers - lying closest to him. It felt cool and smooth, and more luxurious than anything he had ever worn before.

Yudhisthira sighed, and then slipped out of his robe.

He quickly slid on the pants that had been left for him, and, as he was struggling with the seven golden buttons which were supposed to close his fly, he glanced up and momentarily caught sight of his own reflection in the tall mirror mounted on the other side of his room. He looked very pale and thin and awkward. The curling, trailing edges of his deva-markings were visible curved over the top of his right shoulder and along the edge of his collarbone. His face was too long and his nose had a slight, unattractive bump on its bridge. His wet hair was plastered to the sides of his head, and Yudhisthira suddenly thought with a panic that he did not know how to comb it back to the way that it had appeared last night, when the stylist had finished with him.

_I'm thin like Papa_, he thought, with a sudden flash of self-loathing. Yudhisthira had always silently envied his brother Bhima's broad chest and stocky build. _Only Papa used to be like Bhima, too. Papa wasn't always so thin_, Yudhisthira thought again, and he momentarily paused, caught up in a sense of unpleasant dread that seemed to always accompany thoughts of his father lately.

Then Yudhisthira finished dressing himself, wondering as he did so whether Bhima had also gotten his hair cut, what sorts of hideous clothes the servants had chosen for him, whether he had been able to sleep on these unpleasantly squishy beds.

There was a knock at Yudhisthira's door. "Come in," he said, fumbling to close a button at his throat.

Bhima burst through the door and pounded across the room, immediately sweeping up his brother into a crushing hug. "There you are!" he sniffled. "I missed you so much--"

"Me too," Yudhisthira agreed, so utterly relieved to see his brother again that he forgot all about the rib-cracking pain of being trapped in one of Bhima's hugs. He knew that he had been separated from his brother only for a few short hours, but it had felt like an eternity.

"Look at you!" Bhima exclaimed, pulling back from Yudhisthira and then grasping his shoulders, holding him at an arm's length. "You look... different!"

"They cut your hair."

"Yours too."

"I see they gave us matching jackets."

"Horrible, that."

"I think I hate this place."

"Me, too."

A loud cough announced Bhisma's presence in the room. He was holding Arjuna on his hip. Arjuna was gazing around Yudhisthira's room with mild interest and sucking his thumb contentedly; Bhisma, however, looked impatient, even harried. "You two need to follow me," he said, quickly. "It would be prudent for us to leave, finish, and come back here as early as possible."

"Where are we going?" Yudhisthira asked, stepping into his boots. He noticed that Grandpa Bhisma was already wearing a coat and gloves, and was obviously dressed for traveling.

"There's something special that you three have to do, because you're devakin," Bhisma explained as he ushered Bhima and Yudhisthira out of the room and into a hallway. "I had to do the same thing, when I was very little. Every devakin has to do it, because it's a law."

"Do what?"

"Go see a priest, and get tested for a Gift. Then your name and your Gift gets written down in a book and entered into a computer. It's called registration."

"Why do something like that?" Yudhisthira asked, while at the same time, Bhima said, "But I already _know_ what my Gift is."

Bhisma ignored them both, gesturing impatiently for them to hurry up. "Quickly now, this way," he said. He shifted Arjuna in his arms.

"Let me carry the stupid pumpkin," Bhima said, holding out his arms.

Without breaking his stride, Bhisma handed the baby to Bhima. Bhima bounced Arjuna softly as he walked, and Arjuna squealed with delight.

The four of them walked for what seemed like forever, until Yudhisthira noticed that there were no more windows in the opulent hallways that they were passing through, and began to suspect that they were traveling underground. Then they were no longer in a palace hallway but in a place of brick and concrete, and a rumbling, dark mechanical beast was waiting for them.

"What's that?!" Bhima asked, taking a sudden and nervous step backward.

For a moment, Bhisma seemed aghast at the children's fear. "This is an auto," he said, "It's just an auto."

Bhima and Yudhisthira clearly did not believe him.

Bhisma sighed, exasperated. "You know what an auto is. Your father told me that you drove here in one."

"Yes," Yudhisthira answered, "THAT was an auto."

"Autos and small and blue and parts of them are orange and crumbly," Bhima explained. He pointed at the sleek, black thing rumbling impatiently in front of them, and said nervously, "THAT is not an auto."

Bhisma sighed again. He could tell that it was going to be a long morning.

One the children were shown the interior of the auto and the smiling chauffeur sitting in the front seat, they seemed a bit mollified. After some coaxing, Bhisma managed to get all three of them and himself in the back of the auto, and as the automobile began rolling forward at last, Bhisma leaned forward toward the chauffer and said quietly, "Stay underground and off the main streets as long as you can. We're trying to not draw attention to ourselves."

"Yes, Your Highness."

They drove in silence for a while, Bhima occupying himself with bouncing Arjuna in his lap, Yudhisthira staring resolutely at his own feet. Finally Yudhisthira raised his head and asked, "Grandpa Bhisma, where are Papa and our Mamas?"

"They were very busy this morning," Bhisma said. "They had to talk to many people. But you'll see them when we get back home. I promise."

Yudhisthira looked pale and pinched and miserable, but said nothing.

They drove through dark underground streets with no sunlight for what seemed like forever. Then, without warning, they sped up a slight incline, and suddenly, the world was flooded with light.

Bhima whistled. "It looks different in the daytime."

Yudhisthira made a small, frightened sound in the back of his throat. The sunlight reflecting off all the tall, glassy buildings dazzled his eyes and made him feel weak, disoriented, and nauseous. There were people of every shape, size, and color, walking beside the street, riding bicycles and humming speeders, leaning out of windows, waving and calling to each other and gesturing angrily and stuffing fried pastries into their mouths. Strange and frightening machines sped by on either side of the car, and even more flew in the sky overhead. Yudhisthira suddenly glanced away from his window, unable to take in any more. He had seen the city for the very first time in his entire life, only last night. It was too much, he thought. How could people live in a world like this? There was so much noise, so many flashing lights, and the stink of fumes from these unnatural machines in the air. Yudhisthira suddenly missed the sound of birdsong and the taste of mountain air more than he ever thought he could miss anything in his entire life.

Yudhisthira caught a glimpse of Grandpa Bhisma staring at him intently, then quickly looked away, his cheeks burning bright red.

Bhisma was quiet for a moment, then he suddenly leaned toward the chauffeur and whispered, "Pull over and stop the car."

"But, Your Highness, I thought we were in a hurry--"

"I know, but this will just take a moment."

The chauffeur slowed the auto and pulled it into the first available space on the side of the street. Bhisma slipped on a cap and a pair of sunglasses, and turned up the collar of his coat. "Wait here," he told Yudhisthira and Bhima as he popped open his door and stepped out of the car. "I'll just be a moment. Don't make eye contact with anybody that approaches."

Then the door slammed shut, clicked, and Bhisma was gone.

"He looks like he didn't want people to see him," Bhima commented.

"Recognize him," Yudhisthira corrected his brother half-heartedly.

"Nobody will recognize us in this baby," the chauffeur said, patting his steering wheel affectionately. "I think you boys are safe. Members of the royal family usually don't travel outside the palace without a full motorcade and security detail, least of all not in an auto instead of in a hoverer, so nobody's likely to think that you three are sitting inside this thing."

Yudhisthira didn't understand a word of what the chauffeur was saying, but at the moment was feeling a bit too light-headed to ask any questions about it.

The door clicked and swung open again, and then Grandpa Bhisma was back, balancing a stack of papers and two clear plastic cups full of swirled cream-and-brown liquid, each topped with a dome of whipped cream. Almost as soon as Bhisma was in his seat, the door swung shut behind him, and the chauffeur pulled the auto out of its parking space and back onto the road.

"Boys," Grandpa Bhisma said cheerfully, balancing the papers on his lap and handing one cup to Bhima and the other to Yudhisthira, "I think you're going to like civilization."

"What is this?" Bhima asked suspiciously, eyeing his drink with open disgust on his face. "It looks like barf."

"It's called chocolate."

Yudhisthira took a sip of his tentatively. It smelled nice and tasted smooth and spicy and sweet. That was all right, then. It felt warm and pleasant sliding down his throat and settling into his stomach. "Thank you," he said politely.

Bhisma reached out and flicked a speckle of whipped cream from Yudhisthira's nose. "See? There are perks to not living in a cave."

"No, stupid pumpkin," Bhima was saying, holding his drink out of reach of Arjuna's questing, chubby fingers. Bhisma slid the thick stack of papers off his lap and into Yudhisthira's. "This is my favorite newspaper," he said, tapping a picture of what appeared to be a village buried in a mudslide on the front page. "Read the front part and tell me how much you can understand."

Yudhisthira oggled at all of the tiny letters crowded onto the page in front of him. "I've never read anything like this!" he protested.

"But your father did tell me that you'd learned how to read."

"Yes, but..."

"I need to know how well you can read."

"All right. All right." Yudhisthira took another sip of his drink - its sweetness tasted cloying this time - and commenced frowning at the page on his lap, his brow furrowed with concentration.

"Can I see the newspaper?" Bhima asked.

"When your brother is done with it--"

"I know how to read, too."

"You'll have to wait your turn--"

"But there's more than one part of this thing," Yudhisthira suddenly realized, his hands having found the folded sections that pulled out to reveal the separate sections of the newspaper. "Bhima, you can read this one," he said, handing a particularly fat section over to his brother. "Look who's in that picture there!"

Bhima frowned, struggling to hold his drink in one hand, his newspaper in the other, and his baby brother in his lap. "It's that Duryodhana, isn't it?"

"Let me see that," Grandpa Bhisma said, snatching the section of newspaper from Bhima's hands. "Hey!" Bhima protested. Grandpa Bhisma frowned at the front of the newspaper and said, "This is just the 'People' section. It's all gossip and rubbish. A prince shouldn't be reading this sort of thing."

"Then gimme another one!" Bhima demanded. Yudhisthira grabbed the first section his hands found and quickly handed it to his brother. Bhima took it, unfolded it, frowned at it for a moment, then asked loudly, "What the hell is a 'stock market'?"

Yudhisthira ignored him - he was busy watching Grandpa Bhisma. "But that's Duryodhana on the front of that part, isn't it?" he asked. He could see the front of the newspaper that Grandpa Bhisma was holding quiet clearly. There was a large but grainy photograph of Duryodhana at the beach, wearing nothing but his swimming trunks, his handsome chest deeply tanned and his dark hair tousled by the ocean wind, holding his little sister Dusshala's hand and she stomped around gleefully in the splashing edge of a breaking wave. The photograph looked as though it had been taken at a very great distance. "That picture looks awful," Yudhisthira declared.

"Yes, but it's what people want to see."

"Huh?"

"That is, people love to see photographs of your cousin Duryodhana, no matter how poor the quality," Grandpa Bhisma said, folding up the newspaper and placing it decisively in his lap, photograph-side down. "Yudhisthira..."

"Yes?"

"There's something that you should probably understand," Grandpa Bhisma said, very softly. "I love your cousin Duryodhana very, very much. So does pretty much everyone else on the entire planet. That's why photographers and cameramen follow him around everywhere and try to take as many pictures of him as they can. Because the people love him so much, and they love to buy anything that has pictures of him in it. Especially young girls," Grandpa Bhisma added, with a sigh of resignation.

Yudhisthira thought for a moment, then said, "That makes sense."

"Yudhisthira, do you understand why I'm telling you this?"

"No. Why?"

"So that you know what you're up against."

"...Oh," Yudhisthira said, after his great-uncle's words had properly sunk in. He fell quiet for a few moments, staring into his suddenly unappealing drink, thinking as fast and as furiously as he could. Then he looked up at Grandpa Bhisma and asked, bluntly, "So how do I get people to love me instead?"

Bhisma smiled. "It will be interesting to see how that plays out," he said.

"Hey," Bhima suddenly said, "Hey, is this about us?"

Yudhisthira turned his head toward his brother and saw that Bhima, having discarded the finance section of the paper, had snatched the front section of the newspaper out of his brother's lap and flipped it over so that he could read the articles printed below the fold. "What's an 'usurper'?" he asked.

"Let me see that," Grandpa Bhisma said quickly. Bhima reluctantly handed over the paper and Grandpa Bhisma scanned the article in question quickly, his eyes darting back and forth, his frown deepening. "How could this all have leaked out already?" he mumbled to himself.

Yudhisthira, unable to help himself, glanced surreptitiously at the article that his great-uncle was reading. He caught the words "Usurper Prince" in the headline, then quickly looked away, his stomach lurching in a very distracting and rather nauseating way.

Grandpa Bhisma threw the paper aside and then leaned forward, addressing the chauffeur again. "If you know of a back entrance to get where we're going," Bhisma said, "it would probably be a good idea to take it."

"Oh, I think I know a way," the chauffeur answered.

* * *

VI.

The room was small and dimly-lit, but very plain, which made Yudhisthira feel substantially more at ease than the expansive, soaring, opulent hallways and rooms in the royal palace. He was sitting on a cold, metal chair, his legs primly set together and his hands resting comfortably in his lap.

"You shouldn't feel a thing, save for a bit of tingling," the priest was saying, "although, to be perfectly honest, we rarely run these tests on someone as old as you, so you might actually be a bit more sensitive to the effects than an infant or toddler would be," he added conversationally.

Yudhisthira swallowed, but said nothing. There was nothing to be afraid of, he reminded himself. The priest had kind, crinkled eyes and a nice smile, and Yudhisthira had already decided that he rather liked this man, whether he knew his name or not.

The priest flipped a few switches mounted on a wall, and a line of small green lights along the base of each wall suddenly lit up. The walls began humming and buzzing, but not in an entirely unpleasant way. The priest sat down at his desk directly across from where Yudhisthira was sitting, put on a pair of glasses, and began typing rapidly on the keyboard mounted on the desk, staring intently at the screen in front of him. Yudhisthira tried not to stare at him too openly. He had read about computers in the few books that his family had provided him with during their exile, but he had never actually seen one before.

"Yudhisthira, could you please spell your name for me?" The priest asked.

Yudhisthira did, and then the priest asked him for his birthday, and Yudhisthira told him. "Goodness, you've just turned thirteen!" the priest exclaimed. "Congratulations."

"Thank you, sir."

"Has anybody ever told you that you seem rather tall for your age?"

"Not as tall as my brother, sir."

"Tell me, which of your two parents is your biological parent?"

"My mother, sir."

"Then your father was a deva?"

"Yes, sir." It seemed to Yudhisthira as if the humming in the walls was actually starting to become somewhat unpleasant - it was making his skull tingle and his skin crawl in a very strange way. "Sir, I think--"

"It's only natural for you to feel the scanners as they work," the priest said. "It might feel a bit strange. You just let me know the moment that anything starts to actually hurt, all right?"

"Yes, sir."

"From which god were you born?"

"Dh-Dharma, sir."

The priest raised his eyebrows. "Really. That's quite extraordinary."

Yudhisthira didn't feel particularly extraordinary at that moment. In fact, he rather felt as though his scalp was crawling with tiny, tickling little bugs.

"Yudhisthira, have you ever met your real father?"

"Met?"

"Has he appeared to you - in a vision, perhaps, or in a dream? Has he ever approached you, wearing any form? Have you ever heard his voice?"

"No, sir."

"Do you ever practice meditation?"

"...S-Sometimes."

"How often do you visit a temple?"

"I've never been to a temple, sir." Yudhisthira then quickly added, "I've been living in exile. But my parents taught me puja, we do it every single day..."

"Hmm. I see." A ghost of a frown flitted across the priest's face as he appeared to be reading something from his computer screen, but then his smile was back in an instant. "The scanners have detected the presence of Gift inside of you," he announced happily.

"Oh," Yudhisthira said. "Are they done yet?" he asked faintly. He felt as if his skin were trying to crawl off his body.

"Not yet, the machines seem unable to determine the exact nature of your Gift, although they're predicting that you should be able to use it within a few short years."

"That's nice to know, I suppose."

"You look a bit peaked, if you don't mind me saying so."

"I, uh -- It feels kind of weird--"

"Does it hurt?"

Yudhisthira winced, because suddenly, it did. "Yes," he said.

The priest quickly stood up, walked over to the far wall, and switched off whatever machines were running inside the walls all around them. The tiny lights lining the bases of the walls went dark and dead, and the humming sound that had been boring into Yudhisthira's skull abruptly ceased. Yudhisthira breathed a long, slow sigh of relief.

"Now hold still," the priest said, stepping toward Yudhisthira. That was when Yudhisthira saw the sharp, black thing he was holding in his hand. His eyes widened.

"This will probably sting," the priest admitted. Then he bent down over Yudhisthira, brushed Yudhisthira's long hair back from his ear, and slid the long, dark black thing behind the base of his ear. Yudhisthira closed his eyes and held his breath, waiting for the inevitable. There was a sharp pinch, and then nothing. It was over.

"You'll have to come back to get that chip updated," the priest said, stepping away from Yudhisthira, "once you're old enough to be able to use your Gift."

"Yes, sir."

"You were very brave," he said, not at all condescendingly, as he tapped Yudhisthira's shoulder. "Come on, now. We're finished."

"Sir?" Yudhisthira asked, tentatively, as he slid off his chair.

"Yes?"

"Does every devakin have to do this?"

"Absolutely."

"Why?"

"Because of the Gifts," he answered, very seriously. "Because sometimes the Gifts can turn out to be very dangerous things. Which is why no devakin born on Kuru is allowed to use his or her Gift without permission of the High Council of Brahmins."

"...Oh."

The priest led Yudhisthira back to the lobby where he had first entered the building. Grandpa Bhisma was there, sitting on a bench, uneasily rocking a fussing, sniffling Arjuna in his lap. The priest approached Bhisma, bowed low with his hands clasped, then straightened up and whispered something to Bhisma. Bhisma nodded and smiled, looking pleased. Then the priest left, and Yudhisthira took a seat next to his great-uncle, who was still struggling to calm Arjuna down. "He didn't seem to like the scanners very much," Grandpa Bhisma said, bouncing Arjuna lightly on his leg.

"Poor pumpkin."

"How did it go?"

"It felt awful."

"I heard that you have a Gift, but that the scanners weren't able to tell what it was." Grandpa Bhisma was grinning at him. "The suspense is exciting, isn't it?"

"What about Arjuna?"

"This little pumpkin," Bhisma said, tapping Arjuna's nose, "has a devaweapon. The scanners said that he'll be fifteen or sixteen years old before he can use it, though."

"Grandpa Bhisma..."

"Yes?"

"What's your Gift?"

Grandpa Bhisma's eyes twinkled. "Do you know how if you swim in water or sit in a bathtub for too long, your fingers get all wrinkly?"

"Yes?"

"Well, mine--" Grandpa Bhisma suddenly cut himself off, distracted by a commotion on the other side of the lobby. "What the--?"

A group of priests had gathered and were talking excitedly among themselves, and Yudhisthira suddenly heard Bhima's voice protesting loudly, "I TOLD you I already knew my Gift! Now gimme another one."

"What in the world--?" Still holding Arjuna, Grandpa Bhisma stood up quickly and strode purposefully over toward the gathering of priests. Yudhisthira followed at his heels, quietly, although he was already grinning to himself. Bhima's Gift was really, really neat, as Yudhisthira would have happily told anyone who asked him.

The priests stood aside respectfully when Bhisma approached, and then there was only Bhima, standing alone in the center of this silent group of priests, holding something strange in his hands. Bhisma stopped dead in his tracks when he realized that Bhima was holding a sword - a sword which had been bent and tied into a neat, double-layered knot.

"Bhima, what--?"

"It's my Gift. It's really great." Bhima tossed the ruined sword aside absent-mindedly. "Wanna see? I'll need something else."

"Here," an elderly priest said quickly, handing the child his gleaming metal walking cane.

"Oh, that's an easy one," Bhima boasted, taking the cane and twisting it in his hands as easily as if it were a paper ribbon. In Bhisma's arms, Arjuna laughed and clapped, clearly enjoying the spectacle. But Arjuna wasn't the only one amused. Yudhisthira privately thought that the dumfounded expressions on all of the wise, learned priests gathered around them were amusing enough in their own right.

"I can also lift things," Bhima bragged, finishing with the cane and handing it back to the priest who had given it to him, even though it was now useless. "This one time, when there was a big storm and a tree fell across the mouth of a cave where me and Papa were sitting because we had been hunting, I lifted up the tree and moved it all by myself."

"He did," Yudhisthira affirmed solemnly, nodding his head. "I saw it."

"Papa says I have the strength of one hundred men," Bhima proclaimed, importantly, crossing his arms over his chest, as if daring anyone to question this boast.

Yudhisthira nodded again. "He does."

Bhisma spoke then, not to Bhima, but to the priests gathered around them. "Is this true? Is this his Gift?"

"Well, it would appear to be consistent with what our scanners found," one of the priests said.

"I could have told you that without the stupid machines having to tell you," Bhima complained at the priest. "And you didn't have to poke me in the ear or nothing, either."

* * *

VII.

They returned to the palace with as much discretion as Yudhisthira remembered from their departure that morning. Grandpa Bhisma led Yudhisthira and his brothers back up through the bowels of the palace and into the inevitably crowded, busy heart of the structure. But soon the four of them were surrounded by a silent crowd of men in dark suits with dark shades over their eyes, who kept away anybody who tried from being able to stare at Yudhisthira or Bhima as they walked along silently behind their great-uncle. Yudhisthira was not terribly pleased (or comforted) by the silent, menacing aura that seemed to surround these dark-suited men, but he understood at once why they were useful - necessary, even. They were there for protection.

"Where are we going now?" Bhima finally asked.

"To find your father, if I can," Grandpa Bhisma said, distractedly.

Yudhisthira felt his heart thumping giddily in his chest. He hadn't seen his father in what felt like centuries. He would have quickened his pace, if he'd been able to. But unfortunately, he was stuck following Grandpa Bhisma, and Grandpa Bhisma was walking slowly, occasionally leaning over to speak quietly to one of the dark-suited men, occasionally leaning his ear this way or that as one of the dark-suited men stepped forward to whisper something in his ear. Finally, Grandpa Bhisma grinned and said, "Ah," then turned and began stepping more quickly down this hallway and that. It was quieter in this part of the palace, and Yudhisthira noticed only a few of what appeared to be maids and other servants going about their business. His sense of direction had been scrambled ever since his late-night arrival in the city on the previous day, but Yudhisthira was beginning to feel a vague inkling that this was the part of the palace in which he and his brothers had slept last night.

Finally, as if on cue, the dark-suited men stepped away from them, and Grandpa Bhisma led them through a door and into a warm and small room with walls covered in bookshelves and a fire crackling in a fireplace. Sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket, was Yudhisthira's father, warming his hands and sighing. But his face lit up instantly when he saw his sons. "There's my little pumpkin!" he exclaimed, holding out his arms to receive Arjuna from Bhima.

"You look cold, Papa," Bhima observed bluntly as his father took Arjuna and began bouncing him on his knee.

"Papa had to go out this morning, too," Yudhisthira's father said by way of explanation.

"Where did you go, Papa?" Yudhisthira asked, kneeling respectfully at his father's side, as he had been taught.

"A hospital." Yudhisthira's father made a face. Then he turned his head to address Bhisma, who was standing a few steps away, waiting. "Do you remember that poor old sap who couldn't say the word 'testicles' in front of me?"

Bhima snickered. Yudhisthira didn't know exactly what his father was talking about, but he noticed that Bhisma certainly looked amused at the thought.

"He's still around," Yudhisthira's father continued wearily, "and still apparently the only one who's ever chosen to tell me the bad news. And fifteen years hasn't made him any less of a prude about anything."

"Why did you go to the hospital, Papa?" Yudhisthira suddenly asked, trying not to sound as concerned as he felt. He wished that he hadn't noticed the dark circles beneath his father's eyes. He wondered if Bhima noticed them as well.

"Just for a check-up," his father answered cheerfully. "Papa's fine." He gingerly re-positioned Arjuna in his lap, and wiped some baby drool off his sleeve, which Arjuna had been busily chewing a moment before. "And how about you? How did it go this morning?"

"The priests were all stupid," Bhima proclaimed loudly. "Not at all like they are in books. They only knew how to turn machines on and off and how to ask stupid questions."

Yudhisthira shot Bhima a withering glare, but his father just laughed. "That sounds just about the way that I remember them."

"We should probably get going," Grandpa Bhisma suddenly said, glancing at his watch. "I have to take them to--"

"Yes. Of course."

Yudhisthira stood up, bewildered. "Go?" But he had only just seen his father again! And he still hadn't seen his mothers since last night--

"I'll take him," Bhima said, reaching for Arjuna, but his father shook his head and said, "Arjuna is staying with me right now."

"I'll have the nanny fetch him in a moment," Grandpa Bhisma said quickly, ushering Bhima and Yudhisthira out of the room.

"But wait!" Yudhisthira protested, even as his feet followed Grandpa Bhisma's orders. "Where's Mama? Why can't we see--?"

"Later," Grandpa Bhisma said. He closed the door to the study behind him and said sternly, "Right now, your papa needs some rest. And you two need to start your lessons."

* * *

VIII.

Lessons, as Yudhisthira soon found out, involved him and Bhima sitting in a room scattered with couches and cushions, along with Duryodhana and about twenty of his oldest brothers, while Bhisma stood in the middle of them and spoke. Duryodhana and his brothers had thick textbooks which they held on their laps, and well-worn notebooks that they propped on their knees and took furious notes in. A few of them used a stylus to jot notes on the small screen of some electronic device or another - to Yudhisthira, the strange gadgets all looked equally unfathomable. Before the lesson had started Bhisma had tossed a textbook each to him and Bhima, but Yudhisthira had been afraid to even open it. Now he and Bhima sat hunched together in a corner of the room, surrounded by Duryodhana's brothers, who were all, not surprisingly, purposefully sitting a fairly good distance away from them.

Duryodhana himself was sitting nearest to Bhisma and paying close attention to his teacher's lecture, pointedly acting as if Bhima and Yudhisthira were not even in the room. His brothers, however, were occasionally glancing up from their notes to shoot a hostile glare or two in Yudhisthira's general direction. Yudhisthira was convinced that he could actually feel the temperature in the room dropping a degree or two every time one of the other princes glanced at him with such a look of hatred and loathing in his eyes.

"But there was a time," Bhisma was saying, "when much of the inhabited portion of the eastern half of our galaxy was united under one imperial rule. And that was..."

Duryodhana raised his hand. Bhisma nodded at him and he said, "Ten thousand years ago, under Ravana, the Asura King." Then he stopped, but when Bhisma was silent and obviously waiting for him to go on, Duryodhana licked his lips and continued, a bit less confidently, "He conquered over two hundred inhabited systems. And imposed martial law everywhere that his empire extended. And he controlled all of the schools and media, and had his law enforcement troops imprison, publicly torture, and often kill anybody who dared criticize his regime."

Bhisma seemed pleased. "And how did one man manage to conquer so many advanced worlds, many of them with formidable armies and defenses of their own?"

All of the princes looked expectantly at Duryodhana, who raised his hand and answered, "Because he wasn't a man. He was an asura. And he fought using maya."

"Maya, which is--?"

"The power of illusion. He could wipe out an entire spacefleet using illusions that would entice ships to fire upon each other."

"And who was it that finally defeated the Asura King?"

"Rama!" the princes shouted in unison.

"Tell us the story about Rama and Ravana!" Duryodhana's brother Dusshasana said eagerly.

Bhisma shook his head. "You already know that story. And that isn't the point of today's lesson. The point is, can anybody tell me what happened to Ravana's empire after his death?"

"Rama gave Ravana's crown to Ravana's younger brother, Vibhishana." Duryodhana said. "But Vibhishana said that it wasn't right for one man to rule so many worlds, so he restored almost all of the conquered worlds to freedom. He only kept Lanka, because it was his home." Duryodhana finished, but when Bhisma was still silent and expectant, Duryodhana took a deep breath and continued, with a bit of difficulty, as if he were struggling to remember something he had read from his textbook, "and no single empire has ever united that many worlds since."

"And that was the end of the greatest empire that this universe had ever known," Bhisma said definitely. "A house built of violence and hubris, which crumbled all around its ruler in the end." He paced for a bit around the center of the room, then turned back to his young charges and asked, "Now who can tell me about the_second_-greatest empire in our history?"

Duryodhana frowned and furrowed his brow, struggling to remember. The other princes were silent. Yudhisthira looked first to Bhima, who was tapping his fingers against the cover of his unopened textbook and looking bored, and then up at Bhisma, who was staring at Duryodhana rather expectantly.

Then Yudhisthira silently steeled himself, and raised his hand.

Bhisma seemed startled. Duryodhana looked openly shocked. Dusshasana and the other princes, however, glared icily at Yudhisthira. Struggling to ignore them, Yudhisthira held his arm straight up, sitting with his back straight and his chin held high, waiting for his teacher to acknowledge him. When Bhisma finally nodded at him, Yudhisthira lowered his hand and said, "Actually, it was Vali and the Kishkindans, who were around at the same time as Ravana." Yudhisthira suddenly realized that Duryodhana was glaring darkly at him, and his voice momentarily faltered. "B-but the Kishkindans didn't conquer any planets." He took a deep breath, and continued steadily, forcing himself to ignore the fact that Bhima was now glaring menacingly back at Duryodhana, as if daring him to say anything, but Duryodhana, unintimidated, did not look away. "The Kishkindans terraformed uninhabited planets, and added them to their empire. The Kishkindans weren't human, either. They were a particularly rare type of primate species, but as intelligent as humans, and scholars think they were likely the result of experiments of the devas, which at least would explain how they had access to technology so advanced that today most humans can't even understand the remnants of it that they still find buried throughout the galaxy."

"And the Kishkindans? What became of them?"

"They vanished thousands of years ago," Yudhisthira said confidently. "Likely extinct. Human populations have moved into many of the planets that they terraformed, and not a trace of any Kishkindan has been seen for at least two thousand years."

Bhisma seemed very pleased. "Excellent," he said, "Really excellent. Have you studied these things before, Yudhisthira?"

"Yes," Yudhisthira mumbled, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. "Some. Papa and Mama taught me." He fervently wished that Bhima and Duryodhana would stop the little staring contest that they had going on. Yudhisthira figured that it was no longer his imagination that the temperature in the room was dropping. How could his great-uncle Bhisma not feel that growing chill in the air?

Apparently, he did, because Bhisma suddenly glanced from Duryodhana to Bhima, and then up at a clock that was mounted on a wall, and then said quickly, "Oh, dear. We don't have any more time for our history lesson today. But if I could keep you for just a few more moments, there is something about last week's mathematics homework that I wanted to discuss," he said, giving a pointed look to Duryodhana and each and every one of his brothers, who seemed to shrink a little in their seats. "I do have your papers in my study still, but they were all quite disappointing--"

"It's not our fault!" one of the younger princes suddenly protested. "Duryodhana didn't know how to do it, so we couldn't copy off him!"

Duryodhana looked as though he suddenly wished the floor beneath him would open up and swallow him whole. Yudhisthira could sympathize. He knew the feeling all to well.

Bhisma crossed his arms. "Duryodhana--"

"I don't let them_copy_ me, not exactly--"

"If you ever don't understand something, you can always ask me for help," Bhisma said a bit less sternly. "In fact, I think it might be a good idea for you to stay after _right now_ so that I can go over the assignment with you."

Duryodhana hunched his shoulders miserably. "Yes, sir," he mumbled.

Bhisma addressed the rest of Duryodhana's brothers. "The rest of you are dismissed," he said, and they all quickly got up and began to file out of the room, talking in low, urgent voices amongst themselves, most of them pausing to shoot sympathetic looks in Duryodhana's direction.

Bhima and Yudhisthira stood up, too, and Yudhisthira had taken less than three steps away from his former seat when Bhisma suddenly said, "Just a moment, Yudhisthira, you should probably stay as well. Duryodhana and I will be discussing parabolic functions. You should know this material, too."

Yudhisthira nodded silently, then turned and started back toward Bhisma. He sensed Bhima hesitating behind him, but turned his head and mouthed, "It's okay, just go," and Bhima got the message. He reluctantly left his brother alone in the room with Duryodhana and Bhisma.

Yudhisthira folded his legs and sat down on a cushion beside Duryodhana, who was deliberately looking quite polite and well-behaved, at least in the sort of cold way that clearly sent the message that he had no intention of saying a single word to his cousin.

"Starting from the beginning, here," Bhisma said, handing Duryodhana a sheaf of pages of graphs and equations, most of which were covered in red marks. Seeing this, Duryodhana's shoulders slumped a bit, but he still said nothing. Bhisma pointed to the first problem on the page and said, as kindly as he could, "Let's go through this one from the beginning, shall we?"

"I don't let my brothers copy me," Duryodhana muttered, stubbornly.

"I know you don't. And I know how much you help them." But Bhisma's tone was brisk.

Yudhisthira leaned over Duryodhana's shoulder, frowned a bit at the math problem that Bhisma had just pointed at, and then said softly, "Oh."

"Oh, what?" Duryodhana asked, darkly.

"Oh, I know how to do those," Yudhisthira said in what he hoped sounded like a helpful tone of voice. "My mama taught me."

The rest of the lesson went very well for Yudhisthira, who could demonstrate easily how to complete every problem that Bhisma offered him, while Duryodhana continued to struggle with each and every step of each problem. Finally, Bhisma assigned Duryodhana several more pages of the same homework to complete, but handed Yudhisthira a page of much more advanced problems to work on. The two of them left the lesson, not speaking to each other, although Yudhisthira could feel Duryodhana's eyes glaring at him hatefully as soon as they were out of Bhisma's sight.

* * *

IX.

"Parabolic functions!" Duryodhana raged as he punched at the pillow that Dusshasana was holding one last time. " 'Oh, I know how to do those.' Who the hell does he think he is, anyway?!"

"It's not your fault," Dusshasana said, seeing Duryodhana lower his trembling fist to his side, and deciding that it was safe to toss the pillow that he borrowed back onto Duryodhana's bed. He reached out and put a hand on his older brother's shoulder. "He lived in a cave for thirteen years. I bet he had nothing better to do than sit around and figure parabolic functions. It's not your fault that you had more important things to do."

Duryodhana's shoulders were trembling with rage still, although punching his pillow seemed to have drained most of his energy from him. "You saw the way Grandpa Bhisma was looking at him."

"So what? That Yudhisthira is just a nerd. I bet the thought of writing a book report gives him a hard-on."

For a moment, Duryodhana's dark expression evaporated, and he chuckled at his brother's words.

"Grandpa Bhisma still likes you best," Dusshasana said definitively.

But Duryodhana's brow furrowed, and his face darkened again. "I don't know about that."

"What do you mean?"

"Dusshasana..."

"What?"

"Sometimes... Sometimes I just get this feeling. Like Grandpa Bhisma never liked me at all. That he's just faking it."

"That's stupid!" Dusshasana said, vehemently. He shook Duryodhana's shoulder, urgently, trying to get him to snap out of his funk. "Grandpa Bhisma is Grandpa Bhisma! He's the best grandpa ever! Well," Dusshasana amended himself, "he would be if it weren't for all the homework he assigns and the boring stuff he makes us read. But, but! Remember when he gave you a speedbike for your birthday?"

"So what? He gave Sama a tiger." Duryodhana's face was as dark and heavy as a thundercloud, and he stood with his shoulders slumped and his fists clenched, both miserable and furious at the same time. On a few occasions before, one of his younger brothers had showed him up during lessons with Grandpa Bhisma, but that was a different thing. His brothers were his brothers. Besides, after a few pointed words from Dusshasana, and perhaps a punch or two, none of Duryodhana's brothers ever repeated the same mistake twice. But Yudhisthira was not one of his brothers. Yudhisthira was something different - Yudhisthira was a threat. Yudhisthira had appeared out of nowhere and now stood ready to rip away from Duryodhana everything that he had ever cared about. And Duryodhana was not a fool - he knew how much of a role his Grandpa Bhisma would play in the momentous decision that was facing all of them, years into his future.

"Because he's such a total nerd," Dusshasana spat, contemptuously.

Duryodhana's attention snapped out of his own brooding. "What?"

"That Yudhisthira," Dusshasana said, his lip curling in a sneer. "He's just anerd. Sure, Grandpa Bhisma will probably like him - I bet that Yudhisthira is busy getting a boner from his math homework right now. But that doesn't mean that he knows anything about how to be a king, not like you. I mean, there's more to being a king than parabolic functions, right?"

"Right," Duryodhana said, half-heartedly.

Dusshasana peered at his older brother for a minute, then bit his lip and said, "I know you'll make a better king than he will."

"Thanks, but... You're my brother."

"So?! That doesn't mean that I'm _dumb._"

At that, Duryodhana managed to chuckle again.

Dusshasana saw this opening, and seized upon it. "Look, I know what'll make you feel better--"

"What?"

"This," Dusshasana said, stepping over to where Duryodhana's real grandfather's sword was kept mounted on one wall of his room. "Didn't Durmada and Vikata tell you this morning that they wanted some practice time this afternoon, anyway?"

Duryodhana stared at his brother for a moment, then, slowly, he felt a smile creeping back onto his face. "Yeah. Yeah, okay." Dusshasana was right - whenever Duryodhana was feeling sad or frustrated, practicing with his sword always made him feel better. He knew that he was good with the sword - very, very good. Good enough that he consistently impressed his teacher, Grandpa Bhisma, which was in turn a pretty good feeling in and of itself. And Duryodhana was also good enough to have begun tutoring some of his younger brothers in the art of fencing, a practice which also consistently earned him praise from Bhisma. Durmada and Vikata were two of his younger brothers who seemed not only talented, but more eager to learn and to practice than any of his other brothers.

Duryodhana gently lowered his sword from the wall, and when he turned around, Dusshasana had already found his protective padding and helmet and was ready to head out the door with him. "Are we going to the gym?" Dusshasana asked as he followed his brother.

"Nah. Do you have your comm? Call Durmada and Vikata and tell them to meet me in the courtyard behind the fig orchard. I want to practice outside today."

By the time that Duryodhana and Dusshasana arrived in the courtyard that they had agreed upon, Durmada and Vikata were waiting for them, already strapped up and with their swords ready. A crowed of Duryodhana's youngest brothers were sitting off to the side, whispering excitedly amongst themselves. Many of them were too young to handle a sword themselves, but they seemed to adore watching these practice sessions. Around the corners of the courtyard, however, Duryodhana noticed more than a few of his dark-suited bodyguards lurking quietly. As Dusshasana helped Duryodhana strap on his protection, Duryodhana casually glanced around the courtyard and counted no less than a dozen guards, standing at various distances around him - that was far more than usual. He caught the eye of one guard (at least, he assumed he did; it was hard to tell because of their shades) and beckoned for the guard to approach with an imperious jerk of his chin.

Obediently, the guard dropped to one knee in front of Duryodhana. "Your Highness?"

"Is something the matter, that there should be so many of you babysitting me today?"

The guard looked to his left, then to his right, then slowly stood up and leaned over toward Duryodhana's ear, whispering quietly, "The security cameras captured an image of a man with a camera in the orchard five minutes ago--"

Duryodhana threw back his head and laughed, contemptuously. "It's probably our same friend from the beach last week."

"Your Highness, we are only somewhat certain that this man had a camera - he could be carrying something else--"

"Oh, please," Duryodhana snorted. "Let him or her or it or whatever be. If it's a camera that he's got, then I'll give him something worth shooting," Duryodhana said with a grin. "And if it's not a camera, then I doubt that any of my brothers are in danger - after all, who would want to shoot at them when I'm right here?" Dusshasana finished fastening the last of the straps on the pads that were now covering Duryodhana's upper arms, and Duryodhana slid his thin protective helmet over his head with a well-practiced dramatic flourish. "And if it's me that he's after, I'd like to see him try anything. After all, I have you all to count on, don't I?"

"...Yes, Your Highness."

The guard withdrew, and Duryodhana drew his sword. "Durmada!"

"Y-yes!"

"You'd better look good today, we might have company!"

Durmada laughed and drew his sword. He and Duryodhana had a few practice bouts, all of which Durmada lost. Duryodhana felt a bit better getting into the swing of things. He felt different with a sword in his hand. He felt graceful and powerful and in control - which he was. He knew that he was. The pleasant sweat rolling down his temples and down the back of his neck seemed to be washing away all of his worries about Yudhisthira and Grandpa Bhisma. It was a clean, calming, purifying sweat. It didn't exactly hurt matters when Duryodhana heard the distant and discreet clicking of a camera lens snapping open and shut somewhere nearby. _Put this on the front page of your silly newspapers, _he thought smugly as he dramatically parried Durmada into a corner against a tree. Duryodhana's brothers laughed and clapped and cheered at this sight, and Durmada, chagrined, dropped his sword and lifted his helmet, pushing his sweaty bangs out of his eyes with his gloved hands. "Okay, okay. You win."

"Only because you left me too many openings. What did I tell you last time?"

" 'Don't forget to guard your sides'?"

"Yes." Duryodhana rolled his eyes. He stepped away from Durmada and turned to Vikata, lifting his sword in a gesture of challenge. "Well?"

"Bring it on."

"I'll make you eat those words."

"Probably yes," Vikata said, lowering his thin, clear helmet over his face, "but I'm not going to make the same mistakes that Durmada did."

Duryodhana was several minutes into a rather satisfying bout with Vikata when he suddenly heard a voice behind him exclaim, "Oh, how marvelous!"

Duryodhana and Vikata both froze. At that moment, Duryodhana realized that Dusshasana and his younger brothers, who had previously been shouting and cheering throughout his rally with Vikata, had fallen deathly silent. Duryodhana instantly whirled around and pushed his helmet off his head. "Oh," he said, suddenly tasting something very nasty in his mouth. "You."

Yudhisthira was standing at one end of the courtyard, his hands clasped at his chest, staring at Duryodhana with an expression of naive, childlike amazement on his face. He was flanked, as usual, by Bhima. Bhima, in contrast to his brother, looked utterly unimpressed, even bored, by the spectacle in front of him.

"Oh, please, do go on," Yudhisthira said, somewhat embarrassed, when he realized that Duryodhana had stopped and was staring at him. "You're - you're really amazing!"

Duryodhana refused to let himself feel any satisfaction from this compliment. "Like you would know," he said darkly.

Yudhisthira faltered for a moment - behind him, Bhima glared angrily at Duryodhana - but then Yudhisthira seemed to regain his composure, and said, "Well, yes, actually - I do know a little bit about it - my father taught me--"

"Oh, really?" Duryodhana was not feigning his surprise. Around him, his brothers were beginning to snicker quietly, and Vikata suddenly had a mischievous glint in his eye.

"But, but!" Yudhisthira raised his hands quickly. "I'm nowhere near as good as you!"

"Well, we don't know that for sure, now, do we?" Duryodhana simpered, as he bowed his head to Yudhisthira. He then gestured toward his brother and said, "Here. Take Vikata's sword. I would be honored to test my skills against that of my esteemed cousin."

"Oh," Yudhisthira said, his voice filled with dismay. His eyes nervously flickered around to Duryodhana, who was waiting expectantly, then to Vikata, who was holding out his sword and biting his lip to keep a smug smile off his face, then to Duryodhana's brothers, who were all leaning forward in eager anticipation, and finally to the silent bodyguards surrounding him, whose stony faces apparently offered him no comfort. He seemed to have realized too late what he had gotten himself into.

Bhima suddenly placed his hand on his brother's shoulder and said urgently, "You don't have to--"

"Oh, Bhima." Yudhisthira shrugged his brother's enormous hand off his thin shoulder, suddenly affecting an (unconvincing) air of confidence again. "It would be rude of me to refuse Duryodhana's challenge. I'd be honored," he said, stepping forward to grasp Vikata's sword. "But I don't have a helmet or--"

"You don't need one," Duryodhana said, assuming his beginning stance.

Yudhisthira faltered again, eyeing Duryodhana's sharp, long sword nervously. "But you're not using a practice sword. That thing is - that thing is real!"

Duryodhana rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you. Grandpa Bhisma and I practice without gear all the time."

"Give him a helmet!" Bhima demanded angrily. "It isn't safe otherwise!"

"And I suppose that you and your brother had helmets and protective gear when you learned how to use the sword?"

Bhima stepped forward angrily. Was it just Duryodhana's imagination, or did the ground actually seem to tremble with Bhima's thundering footsteps? "Papa made sure that we always used practice swords--"

"Yes, I'm sure that the woods were full of pointy sticks for you to use--"

"We did NOT use pointy sticks, Papa let us use real swords!" Bhima thundered, just as Duryodhana had hoped he would.

Duryodhana paused for a moment, watching Bhima slowly realize what he had said, making no effort to hide the smug little smile that now danced across his lips. "Well?" he asked softly. "Which was it? Pointy sticks or real swords?"

"That's not--! That doesn't--!" Bhima faltered angrily, then shouted again, "At least give him a helmet!"

"My brother's helmets won't fit him--"

"You haven't even let him try one on--!"

"_Enough_," Yudhisthira finally said, shooting a withering glare at his younger brother, who immediately fell silent and hung his head. "Bhima, there's no sense in prolonging this any longer." He then raised Vikata's sword - which was, indeed, just a practice sword, heavy enough although barely sharp enough to do any real damage - and assumed a stance which mimicked Duryodhana's. "When you're ready, then."

"Excellent," Duryodhana said, licking his lips eagerly. Then he lunged forward.

The two of them clashed, for one brief, tense moment. The courtyard was utterly silent, save for the clacking sounds of Yudhisthira's sword ineffectually parrying Duryodhana's thrusts. Duryodhana toyed with his opponent for a few moments, testing Yudhisthira's skills, testing his limits, laughing inwardly as he observed Yudhisthira's every clumsy move. Yudhisthira fought with his brow furrowed in concentration and his jaw set, although Duryodhana could see in his eyes that he already knew he was defeated. Finally, with one finishing stroke, it was over. Duryodhana lunged forward like a snake, startling Yudhisthira so badly that he stumbled and fell backward. The moment that he hit the ground, Duryodhana was pointing his sword at Yudhisthira's chest. His brothers erupted into wild cheers. The moment could not have been any sweeter, Duryodhana thought, until he heard the telltale click of a camera from somewhere within the bushes nearby. _Ah, _he thought with a glow of satisfaction, _perhaps this will be the image plastered all over the papers tomorrow_.

Yudhisthira grinned up at Duryodhana and laughed, good-naturedly, although there was a bit of a tremble in his voice. "I told you," he said. "I'm nowhere near as good as you."

Duryodhana said nothing, but withdrew his sword, allowing Yudhisthira to stand up. Yudhisthira rubbed his shoulder and kept what Duryodhana knew must have been a carefully calculated, good-natured, slightly embarrassed grin on his face. But inside, Duryodhana could tell that Yudhisthira was smarting badly. Well, it serves him right, Duryodhana thought. He'd set himself up for a bit of humiliation, and he'd certainly earned it.

"Nice rally, though," Duryodhana said, rather insincerely.

"Thank you," Yudhisthira said. "This is yours, I believe," he added, turning to hand his sword back to Vikata.

But before Vikata could reach for the sword, Bhima was suddenly there, snatching it out of his brother's hand. Ignoring Yudhisthira's gasp of protest, Bhima stepped menacingly toward Duryodhana - again, the ground seemed to almost tremble with his steps - and said, tersely, "Fight me."

Duryodhana was momentarily taken aback. "You?" He wasn't sure what to think. Bhima was the younger of the two - surely he couldn't be any better with a sword than his older brother. And yet, he was a full head taller than Duryodhana was. And he was broad-shouldered, likely quite strong, and at the moment, quite angry. Duryodhana wasn't sure what his odds against Bhima were.

"Bhima, please--" Yudhisthira said, pleading with his brother, "don't be rude--"

"I'm not being rude," Bhima said, his lips stretching into a humorless grin as he continued to stare at Duryodhana, pointedly not looking at his older brother, who was standing at his side and tugging ineffectually at his arm. "It would be an honor for me to test my skills against my esteemed cousin, wouldn't it be?"

Duryodhana swallowed.

"_Bhima_," Yudhisthira suddenly said, finally showing an echo of the firm, assertive voice he had used to make Bhima back down a few minutes earlier. "Bhima, you're angry--"

"Am not."

"Don't be daft, you'll make Papa look bad--"

"It's fine," Duryodhana suddenly said, meeting Bhima's angry stare with a defiant glare his own. "I would be honored, Bhima." He assumed his ready stance and held out his sword. He had been watching Bhima's movements and could see that his opponent was strong - and he had the advantage of size. But he was also angry, and in Bhima's eyes Duryodhana could see a stupid, animal rage that would be easy to counter in a fight. If Yudhisthira was a bookish nerd, then Bhima was surely a simpleton, Duryodhana was beginning to understand. Duryodhana had no doubt that even if Bhima were skilled at all with the sword, his dull mind and ungraceful girth would surely handicap him in a fight.

Yudhisthira swallowed and licked his lips. His eyes darted around the courtyard, briefly touching upon the silent bodyguards standing at a respectful distance away from them - but their stony faces still offered him no help. They weren't about to step in and stop the fight. Realizing that he was defeated, Yudhisthira stepped away from his brother, giving him space, and mumbled morosely, "Be careful. His sword is real."

"That won't help him," Bhima boasted as he thrust toward Duryodhana. With that, the duel was on.

Duryodhana was caught by surprise - Bhima was swift and quick on his feet, and his thrusts were immediately difficult to parry. Seconds into the duel, and Duryodhana was already on the defensive. But he grit his teeth and refused to let himself feel alarmed. He had to maintain control of the duel, he had to find a way to get his opponent's size and brute strength to work against him. Duryodhana thrust this way and that, but it was no good - Bhima blocked every swing of his sword, and countered quickly with his own.

Now Duryodhana could hear his brothers shouting, cheering him on. It was small comfort. Bhima was fast, too fast, and not giving Duryodhana a single instant to rest or catch his thoughts. Duryodhana's heart was thumping in his chest, sweat was rolling down his back, his breath was rasping in dry, panicked gasps against the back of his throat. And still Bhima came at him, his face stretched in that same frightening, humorless grin of triumph, his eyes blazing. The ground shook and trembled as Bhima thundered around Duryodhana - and Duryodhana knew that it was no longer his imagination. He couldn't keep his balance on the heaving ground, and he couldn't make a single offensive thrust as he was so desperately struggling to defend himself against Bhima's relentless onslaught. His knees were starting to tremble and Duryodhana knew that it was a matter of moments before his legs betrayed him. He was facing a monster.

Duryodhana realized that he had to end the duel, and soon. He thrust his sword this way and that, seeking Bhima's heart - in a blind panic, no longer caring about the fact that his sword was heavy and real and very sharp. Duryodhana dimly heard Yudhisthira shouting something at him, high and panicked - "What are you DOING?! BE CAREFUL!" and now even Dusshasana was shouting something at him, but Duryodhana didn't care anymore. He was facing a monster and he had to get the monster to stop. His thoughts had narrowed and seized upon this one, single-minded point. He had to stop his opponent. Duryodhana swung at Bhima's wrist, hoping to disarm him, not particularly caring if he sliced off his cousin's hand in the process. Bhima effortlessly blocked Duryodhana's swing. Duryodhana thrust forward again and again, and Bhima roared with laughter and blocked his every move. Duryodhana's vision began to fill with shades of red. _I must not lose to this brute_, his brain screamed at him as his arms, now seeming to move with a will of their own, continued to blindly and brutally thrust at his cousin. _I will NOT be humiliated like this! I will NOT be humiliated like this! I'M the best swordsman in this family! ME! Nobody has ever beaten me in a duel - nobody! _

Duryodhana hadn't even realized that he was no longer on the offensive - but with a start, he suddenly became aware that his arms, his talented and apparently independent arms, were now busy furiously parrying a volley of violent swings from Bhima. Duryodhana was being forced backward toward a tree, step by excruciating step. He dug his feet into the ground, but Bhima's relentless onslaught still forced him to step backward, backward, backward. And still Bhima was laughing at him and Duryodhana realized that he was shouting now, not even with words even, just a sort of wordless scream of rage as his sword clashed again and again with Bhima's.

Then, it happened. Duryodhana's back finally bumped against the trunk of a tree at the same moment that Bhima struck Duryodhana's wrist with the heavy, blunt side of his practice sword. Duryodhana's hand jerked back and his fingers flew open, shocked by the pain of Bhima's blow; and his sword fell to the ground. Within an instant, the top of Bhima's practice sword was pointed squarely at Duryodhana's heart.

The world around Duryodhana was utterly, utterly silent, as if the birds in the trees were even afraid to utter a single noise. For what felt like an eternity, Duryodhana could hear nothing but the sound of his own heavy, rasping breath in his ears.

Then Bhima, who hardly appeared to be out of breath at all, tapped Duryodhana's chest with the tip of his sword, and laughed contemptuously. The sound of his roaring laughter seemed to shake the branches and leaves above Duryodhana's head. "Oh, a nice rally!" Bhima said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and then he laughed again.

Duryodhana's fists clenched and trembled at his side. He grit his teeth and narrowed his eyes at Bhima. "You--" he snarled, but before he could get any further, something unspeakably horrible happened.

There was a click, and a flash from the bushes immediately at Duryodhana's side.

Bhima suddenly drew his sword away from Duryodhana's chest, looking almost comically startled. Duryodhana jumped away from the tree and stomped angrily away from Bhima, shouting at a bodyguard that he passed, "I want the grounds sealed off and that photographer found NOW. Rip the film out of his camera and burn any digital storage he has on him!" Duryodhana ripped his helmet off his head and tossed it angrily to the ground as he continued marching away from the courtyard, not caring that he had just turned his back on Dusshasana and Durmada and Vikata and all of his brothers and Yudhisthira and Bhima without so much of a word of goodbye. He just wanted to be away from all of them, the whole awful lot of them, as soon as he possibly could be. His humiliation couldn't have been more complete.

"Your Highness--" One of the bodyguards was running to catch up with Duryodhana. "Your Highness, about the intruder--"

"FIND HIM AND THROW HIM IN JAIL!" Duryodhana shouted. "And if so much as a single picture of what here happened today leaks out ANYWHERE, even on the diginet, then the whole lot of you are FIRED!"

With that, Duryodhana continued to stomp away in a furious silence, ripping off his own shoulder and arm protection and throwing it angrily to the ground as he did so.

* * *

X.

The night was cool and dark, but it did little to soothe Duryodhana's seething anger. That was all right, though. It felt unexpectedly good to just sit and seethe with anger, Duryodhana was now discovering, as he doodled idly with his pen on his math homework, his thoughts more concerned with the frustrating events of the day than with parabolic functions.

From the terrace where he was sitting hunched over his homework with his math textbook and the calculator balanced in his lap, Duryodhana had a full view of the darkened courtyard where he had dueled with Bhima. The palace grounds were now quiet and deserted, but just a few hours ago they had been crawling with bodyguards and security detail, searching every bush and tree and flowerbed for the photographer who had somehow managed to sneak in earlier that day. But when the sun had set and the culprit had not yet been found, Duryodhana had been forced to conclude, along with his bodyguards, that the photographer had already made his escape somehow. And at the end of the day, Duryodhana hadn't had the heart to follow through with his threat of firing his bodyguards.

Duryodhana sighed and shifted in the cushions that he was sitting on, stewing in his unpleasant thoughts. He wondered who the photographer was, who he worked for, which of the images captured on his camera he would sell to which publications. Duryodhana supposed that he would find out by tomorrow.

"Duryodhana?"

Duryodhana momentarily snapped out of his reverie, startled. "Mother?"

His mother, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders, was stepping out onto the balcony. She turned her blindfolded eyes this way and that, seeking the sound of his voice. "Ah, there you are. What are you doing out here?"

"Homework," Duryodhana said, standing up and reaching out for his mother's hand, guiding her toward him. The two of them sat down, side by side, on the pile of cushions that Duryodhana had arranged against one side of the balcony. Duryodhana's mother gracefully folded her skirts around her as she sat. "Ah, this is nice," she said. "A bit chilly, though. And an odd place to be doing homework, if I do say so myself."

"We can go inside--"

"No. You're out here." She reached out and cupped her palm against his face. "Ah, my handsome son..."

Duryodhana sat very still as his mother caressed his cheek. That was good. It felt safe, familiar. Duryodhana had grown up with blind parents and was used to the fact that neither his mother nor his father could really see him without touching him.

Duryodhana's mother withdrew her hand and rested it in her lap. "I've heard that you and your cousin Bhima had a tiff today."

Duryodhana instantly stiffened. "We weren't fighting. It was just a little practice duel. With, with swords."

"Oh, really? Because the guards that I spoke to told me that your little duel didn't appear to be very friendly."

Duryodhana wondered if maybe he really should have fired all of the bodyguards who had been in the courtyard that afternoon. "It's not my fault," he said quickly. "Bhima started it. It was just supposed to be a practice duel, but he was trying to hurt me!"

"Duryodhana--"

"Mother, I--"

"Duryodhana, everybody has heard about it by now."

Duryodhana fell silent, instantly convinced that he could not possibly feel any more miserable.

Duryodhana's mother was quiet for a long, thoughtful moment. Then she said, softly but firmly, "I think that you should be more careful from now on. Bhima is not somebody whom you should provoke."

Duryodhana looked down at his hands.

"When his throne is in question," his mother continued, "a prince's reputation becomes his greatest strength, his most important asset. Do not let your reputation suffer, Duryodhana, in any way. Therefore it might be best for you to consider avoiding Bhima from now on." She stood up, gracefully, and then stepped away from Duryodhana. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your homework," she said.

"Mother, wait--!"

"Yes?"

Duryodhana stood up nervously, clutching his math textbook to his chest. "People are talking about what happened, right? So... So what are they saying?"

His mother smiled at him. "Actually, I've heard quite a few compliments about the way that you handled yourself in that duel. Even the bodyguards were impressed."

Duryodhana finally felt himself cheering up, at least a little bit. "Yeah? Really? What'd they say?"

"One of them actually told me that you fought like a demon," his mother said. "Like the great asura warriors of long ago." Then Duryodhana's mother stepped through a curtain and closed the glass doors of the balcony behind her. She was gone, and Duryodhana was alone.

Slowly, Duryodhana's textbook began to slide through his numb fingers. Finally, it dropped and hit the ground at his feet with a thud and a flutter of pages.

_It was a compliment,_ a calm, rational voice in the back of his brain tried to argue with him. _Whoever said that meant it as a compliment. Mama meant it as a compliment. It's nothing to get upset about._

Then why did Duryodhana suddenly feel so cold?

"It was a compliment, stupid," he muttered to himself, as he bent over to pick up his math textbook. Nothing to get upset over. It's not a bad thing to be compared to an asura. The asuras were the greatest and most accomplished warriors in the history of known civilization. And sure, maybe they were a brutal race that liked to conquer and subject worlds and occasionally eat their human slaves, but - but! Duryodhana had heard professional athletes, and princes from other worlds, being praised by being compared to asuras before. It was not an uncommon thing. It was a honor. Yes, that was it, an honor. He should be pleased with himself, to have his fighting prowess compared to that of an asura's. And it's not like anybody would ever think that he _was_ an asura or anything as unbelievably silly as that--

"OUCH!" Duryodhana fumbled and dropped his textbook again, which had suddenly grown inexplicably cold and wet to the touch - so much so that it felt as if its suddenly freezing surface had actually burned his fingers.

"What in the hells--?" Duryodhana took a sudden, panicked step away from the spot where his textbook had fallen. It was shining, glossy beneath the moonlight - and suddenly radiating a sort of cold, forbidding chill. That was funny. Duryodhana's textbook hadn't been particularly shiny or glossy a few moments before.

Very, very slowly, Duryodhana knelt to the ground, bringing his face closer to his textbook, lying cold and glittering on the floor of his balcony. He suddenly realized that he could see his breath, coming out in neat, white little puffs, the closer that he drew to his textbook. He squinted at his book, but the darkness thwarted his inspection. Then, slowly, he reached out and brushed the tips of his fingers against it. It was cold and wet, like ice.

No, not like ice. It_was_ ice. His textbook was covered in a solid layer of it.

Duryodhana hissed and quickly drew back his hand. "What in the five hells?" he asked again, although nothing and nobody was there to answer him.

Duryodhana straightened up, clutching his shoulders and shivering, his mind whirling. Where the spirits playing tricks on him? Had somebody cursed him? Grandpa Bhisma was going to be so mad when he found out. If Duryodhana could get it in a microwave, maybe, or in an oven, or if he could borrow a blow-dryer from his sister, maybe it could be saved, maybe he wouldn't have to tell Grandpa Bhisma, maybe--

"Oh, there you are!"

_As if this moment could really get any worse, _Duryodhana thought darkly. He turned his head, and sure enough, Yudhisthira was stepping through an opening in the balcony doors and then sliding the doors politely closed behind him. Duryodhana noticed instantly that Yudhisthira had a copy of his history textbook under one arm. "Um, are you busy?" Yudhisthira asked.

Duryodhana stepped in front of his frozen textbook, still lying like a lump of ice on the floor of the balcony, and prayed fervently and silently that Yudhisthira had not seen it. "Yeah, kind of--"

"Oh," Yudhisthira said, although he was clearly puzzled - Duryodhana appeared to be standing awkwardly in the middle of his balcony and not really doing much of anything at all. "Well, I, um-- I was just trying to..." Yudhisthira trailed off nervously, then, apparently having made some sort of decision, reached beneath his arm and pulled out his history textbook, flipping it open to a bookmarked page. "I was just trying to do Grandpa Bhisma's reading homework, and there was, um, there was a lot of it that I didn't understand, and I... Um..."

"You came to ask me for help?" Duryodhana asked, tersely.

Yudhisthira brightened up. "Yes! If you wouldn't mind."

"And why," Duryodhana asked slowly, "should I help you?"

Yudhisthira faltered for a moment, stunned by the question. Then he said, "Grandpa Bhisma told me that if I never needed help with any of the homework, I could ask you."

"Oh, he did, did he?"

"Y-Yes..."

Duryodhana said nothing else, but only glared at Yudhisthira, feeling momentarily overwhelmed with revulsion and loathing. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than for Yudhisthira to turn around and leave and hopefully never show his face anywhere around Duryodhana ever again.

Yudhisthira, however, did not quite get the message. "It's just that, um," he said, faltering, but still gamely pushing forward, "there were a lot of words that I didn't understand, and I thought that maybe you could... I thought that maybe you could..."

"If you're so smart," Duryodhana asked, "why don't you just figure it out yourself?"

"Wh-what?"

"Oh, what's the matter? Is it that you know all about Vali and the Kishkindans but not anything else?"

"It's not like--"

"I'm not helping you," Duryodhana said. He turned away from Yudhisthira, bent down quickly, and picked up his frozen textbook before Yudhisthira could see it. Clutching the painfully cold textbook to his chest, Duryodhana kept himself turned away from Yudhisthira as he stepped around his cousin, toward the balcony doors, sliding one open angrily. Before he stepped through the curtain beyond the door, Duryodhana turned his head - only his head - toward Yudhisthira, and said, "Nobody wants you here, you know." He then quickly turned away from Yudhisthira's face but caught, out of the corner of his eye, a brief glimpse of Yudhisthira's stricken expression. The sight filled Duryodhana's heart with a frightening yet satisfying sort of glee. "Why don't you just crawl back into the cave where you came from!" he snarled, then whirled away from Yudhisthira and stomped off, slamming the balcony door angrily behind him.

* * *

XI.

Duryodhana slept uneasily that night, tossing and turning in the throes of garbled dreams. He felt the tip of Bhima's sword pressed over his heart; he told Yudhisthira "Nobody wants you here, you know," tasting the words in his mouth and this time unable to look away from the expression on Yudhisthira's face; he felt the world turning to ice in his hands, everything falling still and cold and silent.

Duryodhana awoke colder than he had ever felt before, although it was already late in the day and warm sunlight was filtering into his bedroom. He suddenly sat up in his bed with a start. He was going to be late for his lessons with Grandpa Bhisma!

Duryodhana washed and dressed quickly, and gathered up his things. His math textbook had thawed overnight but was now a sopping, ruined mess; with a sigh, Duryodhana realized that he would have to leave it behind. As he ran out of his room, passing by his bodyguards without a word, Duryodhana's mentally rehearsed the excuses he would give his grandpa Bhisma to explain the math textbook. He had been studying in the courtyard and dropped it in a fish pond. No, he had loaned it to Durmada and _he_ had dropped it in a fish pond. No, even better - he had been studying in the courtyard when Bhima had snuck up behind him and grabbed the book and thrown it into a fish pond!

Duryodhana pelted down the palace hallways, concentrating more on deciding whether he could convincingly blame Bhima for his textbook than on where he was going. Which is probably why Duryodhana didn't see the enormous fist flying toward his face until it was too late.

His nose crunched and spurted blood on the first impact. The next fist slammed into Duryodhana's stomach like a battering ram. Duryodhana doubled over and fell to the ground, tasting his own blood gurgling up in his throat. "NOT SO HANDSOME NOW, ARE WE?" Bhima roared as his fists continued to pummel Duryodhana. _Oh, _Duryodhana thought, not at all surprised, _of course it's Bhima._ He couldn't hear much else of what Bhima was saying, since his ears were now ringing so badly. But it wasn't just Bhima shouting now, either. Everybody was there, and everybody was shouting. Duryodhana felt more than saw Bhima's enormous shadow suddenly and forcefully pulled off him. He rolled over slowly and saw, dimly, that no less than four dark-suited bodyguards were wrestling Bhima to the ground. There were more bodyguards coming and more starting to bend over Duryodhana and now Duryodhana could see and hear some of his brothers running toward him and shouting--

"Don't you know what he said TO MY BROTHER?!" Bhima was shouting as he struggled against the bodyguards, nearly frothing at the mouth. "DON'T YOU KNOW?! HE DESERVES IT! HE DESERVES EVERY BIT OF IT!"

Duryodhana coughed and spat out blood. Well, the nice white carpet was probably ruined now, he thought dimly, as he closed his eyes and ears and retreated down into blessed darkness.

* * *

XII.

Duryodhana was awoken by a painful slap across his swollen, tender cheek. It hurt, a lot. It was not exactly the wake-up call he had been expecting.

"Uuuungh?" Duryodhana slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was that he could see his own nose between his eyes. It must have been swollen about four times its normal size. The next thing he noticed was his grandpa Bhisma's face, which looked absolutely furious.

Duryodhana realized, amazingly, that he was sitting upright in a chair. He didn't have time to wonder how he had gotten there or how he could be sitting upright at all, especially when his stomach felt as though it had been pounded into a gooey pulp. Duryodhana quickly took stock of his situation. He was in a room that he recognized as his grandpa Bhisma's private study. Duryodhana slowly, painfully turned his head to his left and realized with a start that Bhima was sitting on a chair right beside him, staring sullenly at his feet. Then Duryodhana turned his head to his right and saw Yudhisthira standing there, looking as though he were torn between trying to cower in front of his great-uncle Bhisma and yet glare reproachfully at Bhima at the same time.

"I wanna doctor," Duryodhana said thickly. His voice whistled through a fresh, bloody gap between two of his teeth.

"You'll live," Bhisma said, shooting Duryodhana a withering glare. Duryodhana shrank back in his seat. He had never, ever in his entire life seen his grandpa Bhisma looking so furious before. "BHIMA!" Bhisma suddenly barked.

Bhima jumped in his seat, which was no small feat for a boy his size. "Um!" he answered, eloquently.

"Let me make one thing very, very clear to you, young man," Bhisma said, leaning forward, menacingly, into Bhima's face. "If you expect to be able to live like a _civilized _prince, then you are never, EVER to lay a hand on anyone, especially not out of anger. I don't care if you feel offended by your cousin or your brother or a servant or a guard - you are NOT to lay your hands on another human being, EVER."

"But Duryodhana--"

"And if I EVER hear of you hitting someone else ever again, I will exile you back into the wilderness myself, DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR, YOUNG MAN?"

"Y-yes, sir."

"Go to your room, NOW."

"But Papa--"

"You're GROUNDED, Bhima. I don't care what your father or your mother have to say about it, although I'm sure they'll agree with me when they hear about this. In THIS house, I make the disciplinary decisions, is that clear?!"

"Y-yes sir," Bhima repeated, miserably. He slid out of his chair and slunk out of the room, pointedly not looking Duryodhana in the eyes.

Duryodhana turned his head and watched Yudhisthira watching Bhima go. Yudhisthira turned his head and opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something, when Bhisma suddenly leaned toward him and said, "And as for_you_..."

"I didn't know he was going to--!" Yudhisthira protested, desperately. "He didn't tell me, if I'd known I would have--"

"You expect me to believe that a young man as smart as you could make such an idiotic mistake predicting his own brother's behavior?"

Yudhisthira looked stricken. "I would _never_--"

"Do you have any idea how strong your brother is? Duryodhana could have been killed! Your brother is completely out of control and you're telling me that you can't do anything about it?!"

"You don't understand, you don't know Bhima like I do, he's--"

"He looks up to you," Bhisma said, jabbing one of his fingers at Yudhisthira's chest. "And he's your responsibility."

"My what--?! How is that fair?!" Yudhisthira finally had found a hint, at least a hint, of defiance in his voice.

"An older brother looks out for his younger brothers," Bhisma said, sternly. "Your cousin Duryodhana knows how to hold himself responsible for his younger brothers - and he has ninety-nine of them! I would expect you to at least be able to handle the two that you have."

"So what am I supposed to do?!" Yudhisthira finally shouted, a bit tearily.

"You could start by growing a backbone," Bhisma said, bluntly.

Yudhisthira sniffled and squeezed his eyes shut.

Bhisma sighed and drew back from Yudhisthira. "Go to your room and think about what you've done. Or rather, what you didn't do." Then Bhisma pointedly turned his back to Yudhisthira, who slunk out of the room slowly, his shoulders hunched, sniffling as he went.

Then Yudhisthira was gone, and Duryodhana was all alone with his great-uncle Bhisma.

"Duryodhana..."

"I'm sorry," Duryodhana said, quickly, before Bhisma could say anything else.

Bhisma was silent for a moment, then sighed again, and wearily sank down into a seat on the opposite side of the small room. "So it's true? What you said to Yudhisthira last night?"

"Yes, sir."

"Whatever would possess you to say something so horrible to your cousin?" Bhisma no longer sounded angry. Instead, he sounded rather sad. Duryodhana personally found this even more terrible than his great-uncle's angry shouting. Duryodhana was ashamed to feel tears beginning to prick the corners of his eyes.

"Duryodhana, he's your cousin," Bhisma said, sternly. "Your flesh and blood. A true king - no, a real man, any man - would never be so cruel toward his own flesh and blood, especially when he was only approaching you to ask for your help."

Duryodhana still said nothing. He was too busy biting his already-swollen lip hard enough to draw blood, furiously concentrating on not crying, not crying, not crying. He was thirteen years old, he was a man, he couldn't let himself start blubbering not a baby, not now, especially not in front of great-uncle Bhisma.

Bhisma continued to stare at Duryodhana for what felt like a very, very long time. Finally, he sank back into his seat, as if every bone in his body were exhausted, and sighed, rubbing his temples. "Duryodhana, I just... I don't know what to say. I thought that you were better than this. I'm just... I'm just so disappointed in you right now, I don't even have the words for it."

At that, Duryodhana gave up, and finally burst into tears. He rocked back and forth in his seat and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and Grandpa Bhisma watched him, saying nothing.

* * *

XIII.

Days and nights passed, not that Duryodhana particularly noticed. After somebody had treated and bandaged his nose, he holed himself up in his bedroom and refused to emerge for meals or lessons or even for affairs of estate. But he was not pouting. He was praying - sitting on top of his bed with his legs in a lotus position, breathing deeply, chanting when he remembered to, willing himself into a state of calm, clear-headedness. It seemed to take a very, very long time.

But finally, Duryodhana opened his eyes and looked around his room.

It was evening - he was unsure of the exact date - and it was quiet within and without the palace. Duryodhana slid off his bed, a bit shakily. His legs felt like jelly. Okay, he berated himself, that was stupid - he had never meditated in one position for so long before. Duryodhana took a few wobbling steps across his room and then stopped, having caught sight of his face in a mirror. He breathed a quick sigh of relief. His face was back to normal--

His face was back to normal?!

Duryodhana's eyes widened. That couldn't be. That wasn't possible! He didn't even remember removing the bandages over his nose - had somebody else done that while he had been--?!

"No way," Duryodhana croaked. Then he tasted his own voice in his mouth, and he realized, with a wrinkle of his newly good-as-new nose, that he needed to clean his teeth.

Duryodhana struggled on his stiff legs into his private bathroom, and brushed his teeth and washed his face. Then he leaned forward, staring into the mirror over his marble sink, poking and prodding at his smooth, unblemished, unscarred face. His nose didn't even hurt anymore. There was still a gap between two of his teeth where one had been knocked right out of his head by Bhima's fist, but everything else was fine.

Duryodhana was dumbfounded. Grateful to whatever higher powers were apparently looking out for him, but also dumbfounded. Surely he couldn't have been on top of his bed for more than a few days... Duryodhana remembered when Dusshasana had been seven years old and had broken his nose, and it had taken nearly two weeks to heal completely...

Duryodhana stumbled out of his bathroom and back into his bed chamber. In one corner of his room, his computer sat on a desk and hummed to itself contentedly. It was always on. And the calendar on its screen told Duryodhana that it was only four days since Bhima had broken his nose.

"Wow," Duryodhana breathed, touching his whole, healed nose with wonder. He made a silent vow to visit every temple in Hastinapura tomorrow and personally say a prayer of thanks to any statue that he could find.

Tomorrow, he vowed. As for today, he had something more urgent to attend to.

* * *

XIV.

Yudhisthira frowned at his keyboard for the umpteenth time in the past ten seconds. Where were the stupid vowel keys? Why didn't any of the keys follow a logical, alphabetical order? Why did it have to take him hours to type up even a simple, short assignment for his grandpa Bhisma?

Yudhisthira suddenly slammed his hands down on his keyboard and sighed. An explosion of gibberish letters flashed across the computer screen in front of him, but he didn't care. He still didn't understand why he couldn't just hand-write the paper that his grandpa Bhisma wanted. It was all well and good for Grandpa Bhisma to insist that he learned how to type and use the incredibly stupid and useless piece of machinery that was his personal computer, but still--

"But that doesn't mean that I have to LIKE you!" Yudhisthira shouted at his computer screen. Then, realizing what he had just done, he bit down on his lip and stifled a nervous chuckle. Talk about childish.

Well, as long as he had the courage to shout at an inanimate computer in the privacy of his own chambers, Yudhisthira supposed, that had to count for _some_sort of progress in this whole "backbone" thing, right?

Probably not.

Yudhisthira slumped in his chair, frowning at his computer, frowning at the world. Why did everything have to be so awful, here in this fabulous royal palace? Yudhisthira hated it here. He still couldn't sleep at night, because of the light and the noise of the city and the sickening softness of his bed. His days were filled with overwhelming amounts of homework from his grandpa Bhisma. He had Bhima by his side more often that not, but he hardly ever saw Arjuna or his parents anymore. Arjuna had a nanny now, and Yudhisthira's mothers were busy running the palace household and involving themselves in public functions, and Yudhisthira's father was always either not in the palace, or otherwise too tired to see him, too tired to see him, always too tired to see him, as all of the servants told him over and over and over again.

Yudhisthira wasn't fooled. He had overheard Grandpa Bhisma and Uncle Vidura talking about doctors and tests and medications in hushed, quiet whispers, when they thought that Yudhisthira either wasn't close enough to overhear, or wasn't paying attention. Yudhisthira had never been told as much, but he knew, which a kind of sickening certainty, that whatever time his father wasn't spending in the palace, he was likely spending in a hospital.

Yudhisthira took a deep breath and forced himself to try typing again, but it was useless. His mind kept wandering, remembering this and that - remembering winters spent hunting with his father and Bhima in the woods, remembering his father's broad shoulders and tanned skin and the long shadow that he used to cast, remembering the first time that Yudhisthira's father had told him to take Bhima hunting since he was too tired to accompany them that day, remembering how pale his father's face had looked and how deep the lines around his usually-smiling mouth had been.

Duryodhana had been right, Yudhisthira thought sullenly. Nobody wanted him here. Probably because he himself didn't want to be here. He wanted to be back in the woods with his father always at his side and his baby brother always in his lap. Yudhisthira knew that if his father was sick, then being cooped up in this strange palace - not to mention breathing all of this insufferable city air, and being constantly exposed to all of this noise and commotion - certainly wasn't helping him get any better.

Yudhisthira stared at his flickering computer screen, which only displayed a discouraging lack of a typed assignment back at him. For four days Duryodhana had been shut up in his room, for four days Yudhisthira and Bhima had been steadfastly avoiding any of Duryodhana's brothers as much as they could. For four days Yudhisthira had been putting up with Dusshasana's hateful, silent glares during their lessons with Grandpa Bhisma. For four days Yudhisthira had noticed all of the servants in the palace whispering and staring at him whenever he passed them by - and from the sounds of it, it was not any sort of pleasant thing they were whispering.

Nobody ever spoke of what had happened four days ago. But nobody was exactly doing a good job of pretending that it had never happened, either.

"Your Highness?"

Yudhisthira snapped out of his reveries and turned his head. He had company. One of his bodyguards was standing on the threshold of his study, bowing low.

"Yes?" Yudhisthira asked, sliding out of his seat and standing up.

"His Royal Majesty, Prince Dury--"

"Oh please, there's no need to announce me like _that_," Duryodhana said, rolling his eyes as he stepped around the servant, who bowed his head even lower and then withdrew silently.

Yudhisthira at first didn't know what to say, but unfortunately, his tongue seemed to be running ahead of his brain. "Your face--!"

Duryodhana grinned and touched the side of his own perfect nose. "Pretty great, isn't it?"

"It's a miracle--!"

"Miracles happen to royalty all the time," Duryodhana said, waving his hand dismissively. "I'm going to some temples tomorrow, as a way of thanks. Want to come?"

Yudhisthira stood rooted to the spot, more confused than ever. "Er, what?"

"Are you deaf? I'm going out on a very important religious-like thing. Do you want to come with me?"

Yudhisthira still stood frozen, his mouth moving open and shut, silently. Finally, he found the words to say, and he knew that they were the right words, hurtful as they sounded, especially to him. "I thought that you didn't want me around," he said, softly.

"Oh, that." Duryodhana rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

Yudhisthira looked down at his feet, but said nothing.

"Hey, I... I said I was sorry," Duryodhana said, suddenly floundering. Then he seemed to recover his confidence. "Oh, yeah! I brought you something." And then he produced his gift, seemingly out of nowhere, with a flourish of his hands.

Yudhisthira stared at it. "Um..."

"Oh... You don't like it?"

"No, I like it, it's great, it's just... Um, what is it, exactly?"

"Oh, give me a break." Duryodhana flounced over to Yudhisthira's computer and inserted his gift - a small, hard, black square of some incomprehensible material - into a slot in the computer's side. "It's the Vels. You'll like them. They're really great - they're my favorite. Hey, you know what? I can totally get us the best tickets for when they play Hastinapura next winter--"

"What's a Vels?" Yudhisthira asked, feeling even more lost than he had a moment ago. But then, as the speakers surrounding the computer came to life and the sound of stringed instruments and a thumping backbeat filled the room, Yudhisthira had his answer.

"They're a band," Duryodhana said, although by that time the explanation was unnecessary.

Yudhisthira stood with his head cocked to the side and his eyes half-closed, listening intently.

Duryodhana watched him for a moment, then asked, hesitantly, "Do you like it?"

Yudhisthira frowned for a moment, deep in thought. Then he finally opened his eyes and said, "Yes."

"Good, I thought you would. This is a mix that Sama made for me." Then Duryodhana tapped a few keys on the computer's keyboard, and the music ceased. He pulled slowly away from Yudhisthira's computer, then turned to face his cousin, and said, awkwardly, "So."

"So..."

"So, tomorrow. About tomorrow."

"I, um, I have lessons with Grandpa Bhisma--"

"I have the same lessons you do, but we can get out of them for something like this."

Yudhisthira hesitated, fidgeting with his hands.

"I get it," Duryodhana finally said, looking away. "It's okay if you don't want to go."

"No! I..." Yudhisthira wrung his hands for a moment, a gesture which Bhima had always teased him about. Bhima said it made him look like an old woman. Yudhisthira supposed that this was true, but that didn't mean that he could easily stop himself from doing it. "I just..." Yudhisthira supposed that there was no more point in beating around the bush. "I thought that you didn't like me," he said, quietly.

Duryodhana tapped his foot impatiently. "Look," he said, "I said something mean, okay? And I'm sorry. So this is making up. I'm trying to make up with you."

"Oh..."

"It's what people do when they have a fight."

"Oh..."

"Is that all you ever say?"

"No, it isn't! I can't go because I have too much homework, okay?!"

"What homework? You mean, tonight-homework?"

"Yes, I have to write two stupid pages for Grandpa Bhisma--"

"Only two stupid pages? And that's going to take you all night?" Duryodhana scoffed.

"It wouldn't take me all night if I didn't have to type it on that infernal machine!" Yudhisthira suddenly snapped.

"Then dictate and get a servant to type it for you."

"That's cheating. I'm supposed to do it myself." Yudhisthira shuffled his feet awkwardly, painfully aware of the fact that he was sulking like a child, but unable to help himself. "It's stupid. I've never had to type anything before. How do you do it so easily? It's too hard for me."

"It is _not_ too hard for you," Duryodhana said, pulling a convenient chair up to Yudhisthira's computer desk and plopping himself down into it. "Your problem is that you're starting with sentences and words. You have to teach your fingers where the keys are, first. That's how I learned. When I was little, Grandpa Bhisma made me type a bunch of the same letters, over and over again, without looking at the keyboard, until I could feel where they all were without having to look."

"That sounds like even more work," Yudhisthira said, grumpily sliding down into his own chair, in front of the keyboard, beside Duryodhana.

"But if you just do it for a couple hours now, you'll save tons of time when you have to type up anything for real later on," Duryodhana explained.

Yudhisthira was startled when a moment later Duryodhana reached out and grasped his hand, guiding it to rest over the keyboard. "You start like this," Duryodhana said. Yudhisthira said nothing, but he thought that Duryodhana's hands were strangely cold.

Yudhisthira finally found his voice. "What are you--?"

"I'm _helping_ you."

"Oh. Thank you."

"We'll start with this key and this key," Duryodhana said, pushing down Yudhisthira's fingers. Then he withdrew his hand and said sternly, "Don't move! And don't look at the keyboard. Just keep your eyes on the screen and move your fingers until you know what's underneath them."

And so Yudhisthira sat like that, beside Duryodhana, for nearly and hour, typing letters but not words, only moving his hands and his fingers where Duryodhana told him to. At the end of an hour, Yudhisthira could still barely type a sentence in less than five minutes, but it was a little bit easier (and faster) than it had been before Duryodhana arrived.

But eventually, Duryodhana stood up from his chair and said, "I need to go, now. I haven't seen Grandpa Bhisma for four days. I'm sure he'll have homework for me."

Yudhisthira smiled up at him, and for the first time in many days, his smile didn't feel forced. "Thank you," he said.

"Yeah, sure, no problem. Listen, about tomorrow...?"

"Yes!"

"Great. See you then," Duryodhana said, and then he left Yudhisthira alone with his homework.

* * *

XV.

"You're going OUT?" Bhima protested as he stomped angrily into Yudhisthira's bedroom the following morning, "and with HIM?!"

"Bhima," Yudhisthira said with what he hoped was a somewhat stern tone of voice. He was just finishing buttoning up his coat and re-arranging a few rebellious strands of hair with his fingers. "How did you get in here?"

"Funny, your bodyguards didn't seem very inclined to stop me--"

"Were you shaking your fist and threatening to rip their throats out?"

"...Maybe."

"Bhima, we've talked about that sort of behavior--"

"That's not the_point_!" Bhima exploded. "You're going to appear in public with Duryodhana?! Are you insane? He's mean and he's nasty and he's going to do something to humiliate you--"

"BHIMA!"

Bhima suddenly shut his mouth. He had never heard his older brother shout at him in such a way before.

"This feud is_pointless_ and _stupid _and it ends HERE," Yudhisthira said, sternly. "Duryodhana and I talked last night. He's very sorry for what he did, and that's why he and I are going out together today. Besides, this isn't a fun thing, this is for a... A religious-like thing. We're just going to some temples because Duryodhana wants to pray. Duryodhana is trying to be my friend," Yudhisthira said, shooting a pointed glare at Bhima, "and I suggest that as long as he's making nice to us, you should probably make nice to him. You're the one who tried to smash his face in, remember?"

"Because he's been trying to get rid of YOU since we got here! Are you blind? Can't you see that? He's plotting against you--!"

"Bhima, are you insane?"

"No," Bhima said, sulkily. "I just don't trust him. He's not a nice person. I know. I can smell it on him. He's rich and spoiled and rotten and he WAS going to be the next king until you came along. Which is why if I were you, I wouldn't trust him."

"Well," Yudhisthira sniffed, pushing past Bhima and stomping out his bedroom, "I, for one, am tired of not trusting my own family. And I have no intention of surrounding myself with enemies, especially enemies that I create with my own mind."

Bhima watched his brother leave, then shouted after him, "I can't believe you're going somewhere and you DIDN'T INVITE ME!"

Yudhisthira chose to ignore this and marched himself proudly down the hallways of the palace, his bodyguards falling into place around him as he did so.

Duryodhana was waiting to meet him. "I like the hair," he said.

"But it's just my normal--"

"Come on," Duryodhana said, grasping Yudhisthira's hand and pulling him foreword. The two of them were surrounded by bodyguards and ushered into the bowels of the palace, where Yudhisthira was not surprised to find an auto waiting for them. This was a fancy one, bigger and brighter than the auto that Yudhisthira remembered from his first outing with Grandpa Bhisma - and it hovered, too, not like the other auto, which had used wheels.

"Where's Grandpa Bhisma?" Yudhisthira asked, as he climbed into the back of the hoverer with Duryodhana. "Isn't he coming with us? Or Uncle Vidura?"

"No, this is, ah, it's like it's my pilgrimage thing, or something. You and I are going alone."

"If it's like, your pilgrimage or something, then why am I--?"

"Because you're my friend," Duryodhana said.

Yudhisthira looked down at his hands and said nothing. The hoverer's secondary engine rumbled to life beneath him, and then he felt them moving forward. A few moments later, they were flying over the streets of Hastinapura. Yudhisthira tried to sneak a peek outside the window nearest to him, and then instantly regretted having done so. They were very high off the ground, and moving very fast.

"First time in a hoverer?" Duryodhana asked.

"Uh... Yeah..."

"I hope you don't mind crowds," Duryodhana said conversationally. "I know we're just going to pray, but they'll be crowds there, you know. Especially girls. Girls love to come see me."

Yudhisthira said nothing, but instead attempted to look out his window again. He noticed, if he turned his head slightly, that there was a small, dark hover-auto speeding alongside him, and another one slightly behind. There were probably more surrounding the entire vehicle. Yudhisthira swallowed. He suddenly realized just how very noticeable their hoverer was at the moment.

"You know," Duryodhana said, "I don't think that anybody's ever seen you in person before."

Yudhisthira snapped his head around, sharply. "What?"

"I mean, you've been here for what, like, a week? And you've never even been out of the palace."

"That's not true, the very first day I was here Grandpa Bhisma took me to--"

"Yeah, but that was like a secret mission." Duryodhana dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "If you're going to be a king, then you have to meet your public," he lectured. "And you'd better make sure that you're doing something decent and worthwhile as long as people are looking at you, anyway. Like harpooning fish for charity. Or going on a prayer pilgrimage."

"Oh," Yudhisthira said, beginning to understand.

"Just follow me and do everything I do," Duryodhana said. "They'll all be watching you. Everybody wants to see you."

"Really? Everybody?"

"For a week, the people out there," Duryodhana said, gesturing to indicate the city speeding along beneath them, "have heard about you, but only that - just rumors and conjecture. It's about time you gave them a face to talk about, don't you think?"

Yudhisthira folded his hands in his lap. "You're not... You're not seriously doing all of this just to make me look good, are you?"

"I," said Duryodhana airily, "am going on a prayer pilgrimage. I owe somebody Up There big-time for what they did for my face. I just invited you along to be nice. This is that make-up thing, remember?"

"Thank you," Yudhisthira said. Then he had no more time for speaking, because he was suddenly filled with nervousness. He could feel the hoverer slowing down and descending to the ground.

"Just do what I do," Duryodhana said, as the hoverer slowly ground to a halt. "Follow me. You and me are here to pray, remember? Just act like we're normal people here to pray. Everybody will be staring at you, but you can't acknowledge them, got it?"

"G-Got it."

"It'll be fine," Duryodhana said, one last time.

And a moment later, when Yudhisthira climbed out of the back of the hoverer and out into the sunlight, he realized that indeed, it was fine. Everything was fine.

* * *

XVI.

"Look at him, just look!" Pandu exclaimed, jabbing his (disturbingly bony, Bhisma thought) finger at the media console. "See? I told you. He's a natural."

Bhisma frowned in disapproval, not at the image of Yudhisthira and Duryodhana bowing their heads in prayer and surrounded by a thronging crowd of squealing fangirls and curious, neck-craning onlookers, but rather at the fact that he, Bhisma, was watching anything at all broadcast by this hateful celebrity gossip channel. "Fine, then," Bhisma admitted, "your son appears to have impressed everyone today. But that doesn't prove anything. All he did was follow Duryodhana around and keep his mouth shut."

"He's just being shy," Pandu said, confidently. "Give him time, he'll get more comfortable in front of people, and before you know it, he'll be as popular as Duryodhana."

"He'll never be as popular as Duryodhana," Dhritarashtra said, with mock smugness. He was sitting beside his younger brother and trying his best to act cheerful, which was somewhat difficult, considering that he was well aware of the way that Pandu was wrapped in a blanket and often shivering uncontrollably.

"Just wait and see," Pandu repeated, rising to the bait.

Dhritarashtra sniffed. "He'll need a nose job."

"You can't know that - you're blind!"

"Vidura told me so."

"Betrayal!" Pandu melodramatically clasped his thin hand to his chest. "This is betrayal!"

Bhisma suddenly coughed, loudly. His nephews, who may have been old and graying themselves, immediately fell silent, appropriately chastised. Bhisma said slowly, "This is not a popularity contest, and you both know it."

"But," Dhritarashtra added firmly, "This is not _not_ a popularity contest, either."

Bhisma mulled this over in his head. It was true, he supposed. He turned away from his nephews, who were sitting in front of the television, and studied the walls of the small, private study where the three of them had gathered. There were books on the shelves that Bhisma couldn't remember having ever read. For some reason, he suddenly found himself wondering how long Dhritarashtra and Pandu would be able to keep joking and pretending to be jovial about the situation that they had thrown their sons - and themselves - into.

"Duryodhana did a very kind thing for Yudhisthira today," Pandu said.

Bhisma turned back around in time to see Dhritarashtra vigorously shaking his head. "Maybe, but in all honesty, he made himself look good, too."

Bhisma nodded in silent assent. So he wasn't the only one who had figured that much out, apparently. Of course the kind, generous prince Duryodhana would take his bewildered, back-water cousin under his wing for said cousin's first public appearance in Hastinapura. That would probably go over well with the teenage girl contingent who never failed to buy up any magazine that published articles about Duryodhana's dreamy eyes or oh-so-down-to-earth personality.

"But," Dhritarashtra added, "Duryodhana really does feel badly about--"

"Oh, I know, and by the way, Bhima is still absolutely one hundred percent grounded because of--"

"Would you like some tea?"

"Yes. I mean, no! I mean, let me get that."

Bhisma turned away from the both of them again. Watching his nephews dance around and ignore the issue of what had happened between their children four days ago was sometimes amusing, but often more disinheartening than anything else.

Without saying a word, Bhisma left his nephews alone in the study and walked out to one of the many balconies that lined this floor of the palace, pausing for a moment to clear his head in the cool night air. For some reason, he found himself thinking of his own brother, someone whom he had not thought about for many, many decades.

Bhisma's brother had been eaten by a fish. He was dead, very dead. Bhisma had finished his mourning and buried his grief years ago. Which is exactly why he wasn't sure if he would be able to handle it if his brother suddenly returned from the dead and came waltzing back into his life after all of these years.

Bhisma suddenly felt a fierce surge of pride for his nephews Dhritarashtra and Pandu. They were his - he had raised them! - and they had grown into good men and good kings. And now Dhritarashtra had grey hair and Pandu was wasting away to nothing. And Bhisma loved them both so much that his heart burned with thoughts of them.

And now they had asked him to choose between their own sons, to name a successor to the throne.

Bhisma closed his eyes and felt the cool night breeze tickling his face. He had never wanted to break anybody's heart. And now he would have to.

"That's Indra in his chariot," a voice said, carried from what sounded like very far away on the night breeze.

Bhisma leaned over the edge of the balcony, peering into the palace gardens spread out below him. He saw two small figures sitting on a bench. Bhisma focused his old, tired eyes for a moment, and then realized that he was peering at Yudhisthira and Duryodhana.

Duryodhana was pointing at the sky. "Can't you see it? That's his head, that's his bow, that's his quiver."

Yudhisthira had tilted his head as far back as it would go, craning his neck at the sky. "I know, I know! My papa taught me all the stars. But - But you can't hardly see them here! They're so dim."

"Dim?"

"The stars are brighter, where I come from," Yudhisthira said. "And the sky is darker."

Duryodhana shivered. "I wouldn't want the sky to be any darker than it already is."

"It's not scary, though."

Duryodhana said something else in reply to this, but now his voice was too low and quiet for Bhisma to hear. Bhisma leaned against the edge of the balcony for a few moments, listening to the distant murmur of Duryodhana and Yudhisthira talking in low voices, sometimes pausing to laugh at something or other, sometimes dropping their voices to a whisper. It was a good sound, a peaceful sound.

_Please let the two of them find peace like this every day_, Bhisma prayed, silently. _Please let Bhima and Dusshasana and the others follow their lead. Please let there be peace in this family. Please, please, help me and give me the strength to make it so._

Bhisma turned away from the balcony and retreated back into the palace.

* * *

XVII.

"It's not scary, though," Yudhisthira said.

Duryodhana scratched at the side of his nose. "So you what, you seriously lived in a cave?"

"Yes. It was really great."

"When I go out to the forest, me and Papa and Mama stay in a log cabin with plumbing and electricity and lots of servants."

"That's because you're going on vacation," Yudhisthira explained, "but I was in _exile_. It's different."

"Do you miss it?" Duryodhana suddenly asked.

"Yes, of course."

"Really?! But it's - it's exile! You're not supposed to want to be in exile."

"But it was nice," Yudhisthira said, a bit dreamily. "There were trees and birds and everything smelled clean and nice. And I saw Papa and Mama and Arjuna every single day, not like here. And there weren't people staring at you or bodyguards following you around. And you didn't have to worry about things like wars and the stock market and scandals with a royal priest."

"Mm," Duryodhana frowned, disapprovingly. "But if you're going to be a king, then you're supposed to worry about those things. It's your job."

"I know. That's why I'm here, I guess."

Duryodhana fell quiet.

Yudhisthira coughed, and then said, "Um." Then he said nothing.

Finally, Duryodhana took a deep breath, and said, "Listen... Listen, um... Can we make a promise?"

"What kind of promise?"

Duryodhana reach out and took Yudhisthira's hand in his, squeezing it tightly. "I want to make a promise. A promise that no matter what happens, you and I are going to be friends, okay?"

Yudhisthira said nothing for a moment, only squeezed Duryodhana's hand in return. "Right," he said, softly.

"And - And no more fighting! I hate fighting."

"No more fighting."

"No matter what happens, with, with--" Duryodhana's voice caught for a moment, then he forced himself to go on, "with who gets to be king or not, we're not going to hate each other. We're not allowed to. Got it?"

"Yes," Yudhisthira said, squeezing Duryodhana's hand hard enough to hurt. He sounded immensely touched, and immensely relieved. "Yes! I promise!"

"And if you ever need anything - anything, okay? - just ask me. I'll help you."

"Me too, me too!" Yudhisthira said eagerly.

"So then..." Duryodhana pulled his hand away from Yudhisthira's. "Suppose that, hypothetically, I needed some help with some mathematics homework..."

Yudhisthira laughed. "Is this also what a king does?"

"Of course. If it weren't for wheeling and dealing, do you think that we would still be at peace with the Panchalans after all these years?"

Yudhisthira laughed again, and Duryodhana watched him and thought to himself, yes, this wasn't so bad. It was a good thing, being Yudhisthira's friend. It made him feel less cold inside. It was the right thing to do, he supposed. And in the end, it was okay, perfectly okay, for him to be nice to - even help out - his cousin, Duryodhana decided. Because Duryodhana had been watching Yudhisthira carefully all day, and he had seen enough. He knew in his heart that Yudhisthira could never be a king. Grandpa Bhisma would simply never choose him. Yudhisthira was a lost cause, and certainly not the at all the threat that Duryodhana had once mistakenly thought him to be.

But Duryodhana was going to be a king, that much was for certain. And it was just like his grandpa Bhisma had said - a king had to know how to make a guest feel welcome in his home.

And that was why Duryodhana felt that it was all right, perfectly all right, for him to be Yudhisthira's friend.

* * *

To be continued. 


	3. Interlude: Karna

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti and Steelehearts for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: KARNA

* * *

It was always night in the city of Anga.

That was not to say that the sun never rose or set, but the sky was always dark, and the stars were always visible, regardless of the sun. This was because Anga had no atmosphere with which to produce the illusion of a blue sky during the day. In Anga, the air was always thin, and the transparent domes that protected the city from the harsh cold of the lunar landscape and the near-vacuum of space around it sometimes seemed slightly thinner. Which was not to say, of course, that Anga was an unpleasant place to live; the terraformed land inside the domes was always pleasantly warm and comfortable, and the sight of Kuru rising and setting in the dark sky every day was something of a wonder that not even the oldest and crustiest inhabitants of the city could ever really take for granted.

Mostly, Anga was a pleasant place to live because nothing unpleasant every really happened there. This was largely because nothing much ever really happened there, period. Anga paid its taxes to the throne in Hastinapura, and occasionally hosted sporting events in the low-gravity arenas outside the domed city. Other than that, it was largely ignored and forgotten by the people of Kuru. Which was fine for most of Anga, a city which had originally been built by those who wanted someplace quiet and far away from the surface of Kuru, and, over the centuries, had largely stayed just such a place.

Which is why whenever a shuttle traveled between the surface of Kuru and the city of Anga on Kuru's moon, it tended to be somewhat of a big deal.

Karna had seen the shuttle that morning. Everyone had seen it, flying low over the dome of the city. But Karna had not expected the shuttle to be carrying anyone important. What sort of an _important _person would travel all the way out to Anga on an errand, when they could just get a servant to do it for them? It was a servant, after all, who had delivered the broken bow to Karna's father two months ago, and they had - all of them - expected a servant to come and pick up the bow when it was ready.

_Great, just great_, Karna thought morosely when he peered out the front window of his father's shop and saw the motorcade pulling to a stop right in front of them. There was an expensive-looking hoverer and no less than three small, black autos behind it.

"Karna," his mother said.

"I know, I see them." Karna withdrew from the window and retreated to the back of the store.

"Is it the prince? Is he here - himself?" his mother asked.

"That's probably him."

"Oh. Oh, my," Karna's mother said, as if she were unsure whether to be terrified or delighted.

_It's just some rich kid_, Karna thought, contemptuously. "Mom, let me handle this."

* * *

II.

Godhika stepped out of the hoverer and sniffed. The street was dirty and the buildings were run-down, especially compared to the glittering streets of Hastinapura. Why, these Angans even built their houses of wood and brick instead of steel and glass! It seemed like insanity to Godhika. Weren't they the least bit concerned about fire hazards, especially living inside an enclosed dome?

Gunavanta leaned over and whispered to Godhika, "All eyes seem to be upon us."

Godhika glanced around quickly. The narrow street that they had stopped on was crowded with houses and shops. Although it appeared to be silent and deserted all around, Godhika could see dozens of pairs of eyes peering at him, from behind curtains and otherwise tightly-drawn blinds.

"Mr. Godhika? Mr. Gunavanta?" Prince Durmukha climbed out of the hoverer slowly. "Is everything all right? Why is it so quiet?"

"It is nothing to be concerned about, Your Highness," Godhika said quickly, bending down to kiss the prince's hand.

"Is this the place?" Durmukha asked, eyeing the small home across the street from them.

"Yes, Your Highness."

"I didn't expect it to be a house," Durmukha commented, already halfway across the street to his destination.

"Many of these peasants operate businesses out of their own homes," Godhika explained quickly as he hurried to catch up with the prince. Durmukha was Duryodhana's third brother and, in Godhika's opinion, every bit as headstrong, stubborn, and as talented a future warrior as was his oldest brother.

Durmukha paused in front of the door of the house in question. There was an engraved sign beside the door and a series of symbols - bows and crossbows and rifles. " 'Adhiratha'," Durmukha read. "This must be it." He pressed a buzzer beside the door.

The door slid open. Godhika was momentarily impressed - he hadn't expected anything to be automated in this primitive backwater of a moon colony. "Come in," a voice from inside bid them, which Durmukha did, followed by his two servants.

To Godhika, it appeared as if the entire first floor of the house had been converted to Adhiratha's business. Everything was bright and well-lit, and spotlessly clean, which was far more than Godhika had honestly expected. The walls were lined with glass cases displaying gleaming bows and crossbows, some modern, some archaic, as well as rifles and guns, some of which were open to better display their internal mechanisms. The floor space was mostly open, save for the racks of carefully organized spare parts and tools toward the front of the store. And in the back of the store was another glass display case filled with parts and tools, on top of which sat a computer and a register, behind which sat a boy.

"You must be here for the bow," the boy said.

Godhika was shocked. The boy had not even bowed his head or in any way acknowledged the presence of the prince in his shop.

"It's ready," the boy went on. He appeared to be one or two years older than Durmukha, tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and dark eyes, and was wearing a brown high-necked sweater, despite the warm climate both inside and outside the shop. A pair of golden hoop earrings dangling from his slightly-distended earlobes. It was the earrings that made Godhika decide instantly that he disliked the boy. He marveled that a child in such a poor community would be vain enough to wear the sort of jewelry usually reserved for royalty - or at least for the better parts of society. Either the boy had delusions of grandeur, or the earrings were tawdry fakes.

"It's right here," the boy went on, hefting Durmukha's crossbow up onto the glass counter in front of him.

"Wow," Durmukha gasped, stepping toward the counter. "It looks as good as new!"

"It's better than new," the boy with the earrings said, finally showing a hint of a smile on his otherwise reserved face. "I molded a completely new latch mechanism and re-filed and polished the bolt track. It should fire better than it ever has before." The boy cocked his head at Durmukha. "This bow really is something. They haven't made a model like this for at least a hundred years."

"It's an antique - it was my grandfather's. It's sort of a family heirloom."

"You must have taken very good care of it," the boy said, touching the brace of the crossbow lightly, almost reverently, with his fingers. "It's kind of rare that we get one this beautiful to work with."

Godhika wasn't exactly sure which annoyed him the most - the fact that this presumptuous child was chatting with Prince Durmukha as if they were school chums, or the fact that Durmukha was encouraging him even though he should have known better. Or perhaps what annoyed Godhika the most was the fact that Adhiratha was insulting _all _of them by letting his clerk, or apprentice, or whatever, handle royal property like the crossbow. Not only that, but Adhiratha was furthering the insult by actually having this lowly clerk attend to their transaction instead of doing it himself, in person, as was the proper thing to do.

Godhika stepped forward suddenly, pushing himself between Durmukha and the bow. "Excuse me, boy," he said, as politely as he could manage, "But_Prince _Durmukha and I have traveled a very long way in order to see your master in person. Is he around?"

"My... My what?"

"You are Adhiratha's apprentice, aren't you?"

The boy looked baffled for a moment, then he smiled and shook his head. "Adhiratha is my father."

Godhika clenched his fist at his side. He did not appreciate being laughed at, and there was laughter behind the boy's smile. "Is he around?" Godhika asked, through gritted teeth.

The smile vanished from the boy's face. "No, sir," he said.

"What do you mean, no?"

"My father is very ill," the boy said, carefully, as polite and reserved as he possibly could be, although something in his stance suddenly seemed tense, and guarded. "He's in a hospital."

"Well, that's unfortunate," Gunavanta said, stepping up beside Godhika. "Prince Durmukha insisted on coming all this way to personally thank Adhiratha for his work repairing this bow. We brought our business to Adhiratha," Gunavanta added, pointedly, "because we'd heard that he was the best at what he does."

"My father is the best at what he does," the boy said, bluntly. "He's the best weaponsmith in the system."

"And I see that he has imparted to you the virtue of modesty," Gunavanta replied.

The boy said nothing, but if anything, his expression was even more guarded than before.

"This simply won't do," Godhika said. "Prince Durmukha wishes to speak with your father, to thank him for--"

"Oh, but my father never touched this bow," the boy said. "I repaired it."

Godhika momentarily faltered. He wasn't even sure where to start comprehending the rudeness of the boy's statement. "Boy," he said, "What is your name?"

"Karna."

"Karna, _sir._"

"Yes, _sir._"

"Karna, can you tell me why when your king's son specifically requested _your father _to repair a family heirloom, your father, instead of fulfilling his promise to us, passed the work onto his less-qualified son, instead?"

Karna's shoulders tensed up more, but he said politely, "My father has the shaking sickness. He can't hold his hands still, and he can't repair weapons. But, _sir_, my father has already taught me everything he knows. I can do anything that he can do - even better. Just ask any of our other clients--"

"Your father should have told us that," Gunavanta said. "We wanted Adhiratha to touch this bow, and Adhiratha alone. If we'd known that Adhiratha was incapable of doing what we asked him to do, we would have taken our business elsewhere."

"Um, um," Durmukha was saying, trying to push himself between Godhika and Gunavanta, "This is fine, really. It's fixed, isn't it? Better than new."

"But, Your Highness--"

"This is _fine_, Mr. Godhika," Durmukha said, finally sticking his nose in the air the way that only a real prince could.

"Yes, Your Highness," Godhika said, bowing his head, chastised.

By that time, Karna was busy typing something on the computer in front of him. He tapped a few keys, and then turned the monitor toward Godhika and said, rather coldly, "If that will be all, then?"

Godhika stared at the figure displayed on the blue screen of the monitor in tall, white numbers. "And... what is that, exactly?"

"The amount that you owe our humble little shop, _sir._"

"Owe?" Godhika asked. "Boy, do you know the make and manufacture of that crossbow?"

"It's a Kaumodaki DHA4300. Of course I know. I told you, Kaumodaki discontinued these models over a hundred years ago."

"Yes, but then, you should also know that the DHA4300 comes with a lifetime warranty. A _lifetime _warranty that the parent company still enforces."

Karna sighed, obviously sensing where this was going. "Sir, a warranty will only pay for your repairs if the weapon itself is faulty. The man who dropped this bow off with us two months ago mentioned something about an accident--"

"That was my little brother, Mahavahu," Durmukha said, sheepishly. "He tried to turn it into a musical instrument, and tore up the firing mechanism."

"Kaumodaki 's warranty," Karna said, glaring at Godhika coldly, "certainly does not cover _inflicted _damage such as that."

Godhika's fist twitched at his side. "You hardly know what you're talking about, boy."

"No, sir. My father and I have been repairing Kaumodakis for years. I know their warranties inside and out, like the back of my hand."

"Mr. Godhika, please just pay him the money," Durmukha said, sternly.

"With all due respect, Your Highness, I hardly feel as if we owe--"

"Mr. Godhika, that is an _order_," Durmukha said.

Godhika had been serving the royal family all of his life, and he was used to hearing children younger than his own sons giving him orders. But that didn't mean that it didn't still rankle, at least somewhat. Durmukha was twelve years old, soon to be going on thirteen, and as far as Godhika was concerned, Durmukha's behavior today - responding to Karna's rude treatment with kindness, and then giving in to the peasant boy's unfounded demands for money - demonstrated that Durmukha still had a lot to learn about the proper role of a prince.

"Mr. Gunavanta," Godhika said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Please escort Prince Durmukha back to the hoverer," he said. "I'll be along in just a moment."

"Come, Your Highness," Gunavanta said, taking Durmukha's hand.

Durmukha allowed himself to be led out of the store. He had always been a follower, never a leader, Godhika knew from experience. None of Duryodhana's brothers were leaders. They always followed, followed, and did as they were told. But at the last minute Durmukha turned his head, glanced over his shoulder, and said, "Pay him, Mr. Godhika, and give Adhiratha my regards."

Then Godhika and the boy Karna were alone in the store.

"Listen, boy," Godhika said, leaning over the glass counter toward Karna, resting his hand lightly on the crossbow that had started all of this trouble. "Warranty aside, the fact that your father agreed to repair this bow himself, and then was unable to fulfill that promise to us, makes it sound an awful lot as if I owe you no money whatsoever. Don't you agree?"

Karna stood his ground, glaring defiantly up at Godhika. "No, sir. I don't agree."

"Surely you don't think that I should pay such an exorbitant amount for the work of a rank amateur such as yourself?"

"I am no amateur, sir. I've been helping my father work since I was old enough to hold a bow." Karna tapped the crossbow on the counter. "I even test-fired this one myself. It works far better now than it could have before. A fifteen percent increase in accuracy and arrow speed compared to an unmodified DHA4300."

Godhika felt his hand on the counter clenching into a fist. "You... You test-fired it?"

"Yes, sir. My father and I test every weapon that we repair before we return it to its owners."

"You touched a royal heirloom with your filthy worker's hands?"

"My father's filthy workers hands," Karna said, his voice soft and low and dangerous, "were certainly good enough to touch that bow when you wanted him to repair it, weren't they?"

"You are a weaponsmith," Godhika growled, "not a weapons user. Only royalty and the military are allowed to own and use weapons like these, not peasants like you. You repair the weapons, but you do not use them. Is that understood, boy? Didn't your father teach you as much?"

"You owe me this amount, sir," Karna said, tapping the computer screen.

"Are you listening to me, boy?"

"You owe me this amount, _sir._"

And then, something in Godhika snapped. "Idiot brat!" he snarled, his hand reaching out - almost of its own accord, almost as if it had a will of its own - and clutching at the collar of the insolent boy's sweater. The boy gasped, finally showing some surprise, but by then, it was too late. "IDIOT BRAT!" Godhika roared, jerking his hand forward. The boy's chest and face slammed into the glass counter, which cracked but did not shatter beneath him. The boy cried out and clawed at Godhika's hands, both of which were now wrapped around his neck, but his struggles were futile. Godhika lifted him up and slammed him down into the counter, up and back down, up and back down again. "You presumptuous, arrogant, rude little brat! It's time that someone _taught you your place, boy_!"

"KARNA!"

Godhika let go of the boy's neck, barely noticing that his hands, again as if acting of their own accord, had torn the collar of the boy's sweater wide open as they pulled away from him. Godhika turned and saw an elderly woman standing near a door toward the opposite side of the shop. She was wearing an apron stained with grease over a worn pair of coveralls, with a pair of goggles pushed back high over her thin, graying hair. "What are you doing to my son?!" she demanded, marching toward Godhika. "You monster! I'll call the police!"

Godhika sniffed. "Your son was trying to swindle me. Do you even know who I am, Madame?"

"I don't care if you're His Majesty Dhritarashtra himself, I'm going to call the police right now--!"

"It's okay, Mom."

Karna's mother turned toward him, sharply. "What?"

Karna was slowly, shakily pushing himself up off the top of the glass counter. His hair was mussed and his lower lip split and bleeding.. "This fine customer and I were just... Getting into a dispute about a warranty." Karna finally straightened himself up, straightening his neck proudly, as his torn sweater fell down partly around his left shoulder, and part of his undershirt - also torn by Godhika's eager hands - fell away from his neck. "He was just leaving, mom. It's okay."

"Oh, Karna," his mother gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in dismay.

For a moment, Karna seemed baffled. "Mom? What is it? What's wrong?"

"Good Gods," Godhika added, equally as stunned.

For a moment, Karna seemed utterly lost. Why were they both staring at him with such horrified expressions on their faces? Then he realized since his sweater and undershirt had both been torn open, that meant that the skin on his neck and on a bit of his left shoulder was now exposed for anybody to see. And the curling, looping marks crawling up his shoulder and neck were also exposed for anybody to see.

"But that can't be!" Godhika said, for a moment stunned, then suddenly furious. "You're a peasant! Devakins are never born to low families such as yours!"

"It's not what you think!" Karna's mother said, pleadingly, as Karna, his cheeks suddenly flushing a deep shade of red, tried in vain to tug the torn remains of the top of his sweater over his exposed skin, mumbling, "No, see, it's just a mistake, I'm not--"

And suddenly Godhika understood why the boy had been wearing a high-necked sweater despite Anga's summery weather. It appeared as if Adhiratha's family had a dirty little secret that they had been trying very, very hard to keep hidden. And they had succeeded. Until now, that was.

"Madame," Godhika said smugly, pulling a comm out of his robes, "I think that it is I who should be calling the authorities."

* * *

III.

Things seemed to happen very fast after that. The police came and then Godhika left. Everybody knew everybody else in a town like Anga, which was why Karna already knew Mr. Parvata and Mr. Naabhi, the policemen. But when Mr. Naabhi came in and put handcuffs on Karna's mother, Karna was too stunned to ask why. Mr. Parvata put his hand on Karna's shoulder and steered him out the front door of his own home into the street outside, where a police hoverer was waiting for them. Mr. Parvata was saying things like "Don't be afraid" and "It's all right" and "You're not in trouble for anything," but Karna wasn't listening to him. Karna was watching Mr. Naabhi push his handcuffed mother into the back of a different hoverer. Karna craned his neck, trying to meet his mother's eyes, but her head was bowed and her hair was falling over her face and she was looking away from him, her shoulders hunched in shame.

Karna became vaguely aware, at this point, that although there was nobody else on the street, there were dozens of eyes watching him from behind closed curtains and blinds and slightly cracked-open doorways.

Karna climbed into the back of his hoverer, numbly. He thought, in a sort of detached way, that he really should start asking questions right about now. Why was his mother in handcuffs? Why was she in a different hoverer? Where were they taking her?

Karna sat in the back of the hoverer and watched Mr. Parvata sit himself in the driver's seat. There was a metal grating separating the back of the hoverer from the front, but Karna could still see Mr. Parvata just fine. Karna absent-mindedly tugged again at the torn fabric of his sweater, but it was no use. The markings on his neck and shoulder had been exposed for the whole world to see.

The hoverer started moving, and Karna sat very still for a very, very long time. "Where are we going?" he finally asked.

"We're going to see Mr. Chandraka. Just for a little bit."

"Oh," Karna said. Mr. Chandraka was a priest. Karna had never really decided whether he liked Mr. Chandraka or not. Karna had liked Mr. Naabhi very much until a few minutes ago, when he had seen Mr. Naabhi putting handcuffs on his mother.

Mr. Naabhi was in charge of Anga's canine unit, which really only consisted of one dog, named Muddy. Muddy was not a fierce name for a dog, and Muddy himself had never been particularly fierce. Mr. Naabhi used to bring Muddy in to Karna's classes at school and lecture about how dangerous it was to experiment with drugs. Karna was too old for Mr. Naabhi's lectures now, of course, and he hadn't seen Mr. Naabhi bring Muddy into one of his classrooms since he had graduated primary school, many years ago. But he had always thought that Mr. Naabhi was okay, because he had Muddy and Muddy listened to him, and Karna knew from experience that a good dog would never listen to or obey a man who wasn't good himself. So Mr. Naabhi must have been all right.

Until he had put Karna's mother in handcuffs, that is.

"Here we are," Mr. Parvata said, pulling the hoverer to a stop.

Karna got out of the hoverer when Mr. Parvata let him. He glanced around quickly and saw that the other police hoverer was nowhere around. They were in front of one of Anga's few temples, and Mr. Parvata quickly ushered him inside, past a statue of Ganesha and a few people praying, and into a back room, where Mr. Chandraka was waiting in a small study full of books and candlelight and a large, comfortable chair that Mr. Parvata steered Karna toward and made him sit down in.

Karna folded his hands in his lap and swallowed. He was still painfully aware of the ragged appearance of his torn sweater.

Fortunately, Mr. Chandraka was either too polite to stare at the markings on Karna's neck, or at least too embarrassed to risk even glancing at them. He was sitting behind a desk and jotting things down in an open notebook as he spoke with Karna. "Well, Karna," he began, jovially enough, "I heard that you've been keeping a very important secret from me. Is that right?"

"Where'd Mom go?" Karna asked.

Mr. Chandraka glanced at Mr. Parvata, who was standing in the doorway of the study. "Your mother's fine," Mr. Parvata said. "We had to take her to the station to answer some questions, but she's not in trouble."

"Then why'd you put handcuffs on her?"

"Karna, I really think that you should speak to Mr. Chandraka now."

Karna looked down at his hands, which were slowly curling up and clenching into fists.

"Karna, would you look at me, for a moment?" Mr. Chandraka asked.

Karna looked up at him.

"It looks as though something happened to your lip."

"Somebody hit me."

"Who hit you?"

"...Just some jerk."

"Karna, are you a devakin?" Mr. Chandraka asked, bluntly.

"Yes, sir."

"And you've never told anybody?"

"No, sir. Only my mom and dad know. They told me never to tell anybody."

"And why did they tell you not to tell anybody?"

"Because if people found out then they would take me away from Mom and Dad."

Mr. Chandraka suddenly looked very sad. "That's..."

"It's true, isn't it," Karna said, coldly, bluntly. "You're going to take me away."

"Karna, it's not, please Karna, it's not that..." Mr. Chandraka trailed off. Then he answered quietly, "Yes, Karna, I will be taking you planetside in a short while. You'll be with me the whole time, and they'll be nothing to be afraid of. The Council of Brahmins just needs to see you for a little bit, and test you, to make sure that your Gift isn't going to hurt anybody."

"That's stupid. My Gift would never hurt anybody."

"Do you know what your Gift is, then?"

"Well... No."

"Then the Council will have to--"

"That man hit me, you know!" Karna suddenly burst out. He whirled toward Mr. Parvata, glaring at him furiously. "He tried to choke me! He tried to break stuff in my dad's shop! You should arrest him, you know. That's assault!"

"Karna," Mr. Parvata said wearily, "if the man who hurt you was a retainer of Prince Durmukha, then there's nothing that we can do--"

"But that's not FAIR!"

"The laws of man may not always be fair," Mr. Chandraka said, firmly, "but you needn't worry too much about this brutish retainer, Karna. Whatever harm he may have done to you, that karma will come back to haunt him soon enough."

Karna stared at Mr. Chandraka skeptically, as if not quite sure whether he wanted to believe that or not.

"Sometimes it may not seem like it," Mr. Chandraka said, smiling softly, "but the gods are up there and they are watching over us." Mr. Chandraka leaned over toward Karna, and said conspiratorially, "Just between you and me, do you honestly think that Lord Vishnu is going to let that awful man get away with what he did to you?"

"Yes," Karna answered bluntly. Mr. Chandraka seemed taken aback, but Karna went on ruthlessly. "Some jerk walks into my father's store and tries to steal my money and break my father's things and beat me and strangle me, and HE gets to walk away from all of this while my MOM gets put in handcuffs and I get kidnapped and taken planetside forever and never to return here ever again?! How is that FAIR?!"

Mr. Chandraka sat back in his seat, silently. He had no answer for this. And Karna sat in his chair and sulked and kicked at the air in front of him, hoping that if he put on enough of a show of being angry, then Mr. Chandraka and Mr. Parvata wouldn't notice the wetness prickling at the edge of his eyes.

* * *

IV.

Radha sat in the bare, brightly-lit room with her hands folded in her lap. She was well aware of how she looked - dirty, greasy hair, oil-stained coveralls, a fresh red burn already busy leaving a new callus on the side of her left hand. She had been working in her husband's workshop, welding parts, when Prince Durmukha and his retainers had appeared at her home. Karna had been manning the counter all day and had been much more presentable than his mother in the first place, which was why she had retreated back into the workshop and left her son alone to handle the transaction. It was a decision that Radha was now coming to regret.

"Which one of you is his human parent?" Naabhi asked, sitting on the opposite side of the bare table between him and Radha.

Radha took a deep breath, and pushed a lock of her dirty hair away from her forehead. She had been using her safety goggles to keep her hair out of her face, until the police had taken them away from her. Now she was left with nothing to keep her bangs from falling into her face. "Please, Mr. Naabhi," she asked, "I really would like to call my husband."

Naabhi shook his head, slowly, sadly. "Listen, I'm telling you this, not as a police officer, but as a friend-- It's better for you to be honest with me right now, than it will be for you to keep trying to hide things from--"

"I'm not trying to hide things. I'm trying to protect my privacy."

Naabhi sighed. "Radha," he said, calling her by her first name.

Radha looked down at her hands. She knew Naabhi and Parvata, and everybody else at the police station, who were probably watching the two of them from behind the mirrored glass panel that took up a large portion of one wall of the otherwise bare interrogation room. She had attended worship and festivals and concerts and theater performances with these people. Her husband and her son had often repaired the policemen's weapons and even sold them new ones over the years. These men were her friends. And now they had just found out that she had been lying to them, and to everyone, for years.

And they still didn't have a clue just how much Radha had lied to them, about everything. But they were about to find out.

"Which one of you is Karna's human parent?" Naabhi asked again, patiently, coaxingly.

Radha swallowed her fear, and then looked up at him. "I can't answer that. Please. Don't make me. Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because..." Radha's voice broke, and she buried her face in her hands. "Because if I tell you the truth, my son will find out that I've been lying to him for all these years, too."

Radha trembled for a few moments, but she sensed that Naabhi was still there on the other side of the table, still waiting for her, and that he would not leave until he knew what he needed to know. So Radha took a deep breath, and composed herself. There was no use in delaying the inevitable, she thought.

"I'll tell you everything," she promised, brushing a tear from her cheek with the back of her burned hand. "Only, please, don't tell Karna what I'm about to tell you. I... I want to be the one to tell him."

"Oh, Radha," Naabhi said softly, but he still sat still and quiet, waiting for her to continue.

"My only son is a devakin," Radha began, struggling to keep her voice from shaking, struggling to keep her chin held high, struggling to cling to the last shreds of her dignity. She would not break down again in front of this man, friend or not, she vowed silently. "My husband and I have kept that hidden from the world for as long as we possibly could. We know that devakin aren't born to peasant families like ours. We know that if anybody ever found out about our son, he would be taken away from us and shipped down planetside to remain in the custody of the priests. My husband and I aren't stupid, Mr. Naabhi. We know that it's happened before."

Naabhi remained stony-faced, but he did not bother to deny the truth of Radha's statement.

"Because devakin can only be born to royalty and to priests," Radha said, unable to keep a tremble of anger out of her voice. "Because a god or a goddess would never let his or her divine blood be intermingled with the blood of commoner like you or I. And apparently only royalty and priests can be trusted to raise them properly, as well."

"Radha, this isn't the time for--"

"My husband and I always told Karna that he was special, that he was a devakin," Radha went on, cutting him off. "And we always told him to never, ever let anybody find out that he was a devakin. Because if they did, we told him that he would be taken away from mommy and daddy. So we raised him to be careful. We taught him to always cover up his devakin markings, ever since he was old enough to dress himself. And he always has. He's been very good about it, very careful about it, since he was old enough to understand much of anything. And it's always been hard for him, really. He can't go swimming with his friends, when he was little we wouldn't let him sleep over at a friend's house, and he... He's just been very good about it. Very careful," she repeated, not caring how many times she had repeated those exact same words in the past minute.

"And that's why Karna never told anyone that he was a devakin. And that's why my husband and I never told anyone either, and why we never had him registered with the Council."

"Which is a grievous breach of the law," Naabhi said.

"I knew that I was breaking the law," Radha said, "by not having him registered." Her hands trembled in her lap. "But I couldn't bear the thought of losing him."

"Does Karna have a Gift?" Naabhi suddenly asked.

"He must!" Radha said, fiercely. "Only... He's not quite old enough for any Gift to manifest itself, yet."

Naabhi sighed again. "This is unbelievable," he said, more to himself, than to Radha. "I mean, I've watched Karna grow up since he was just a baby, and I never knew - I never once suspected - I mean, I always thought that he had talented hands and was kind of special that way, but I never--!"

"My son IS special," Radha said, vehemently. Then she added, bitterly, "Since he's a devakin, I suppose that makes him a bit too special to be raised by the likes of me and my husband, isn't that right? That's what you'll be telling me in a few minutes, isn't it? 'Devakin are born for better things' than the life that I or my husband could offer him. A devakin shouldn't spend the rest of his life repairing antique weapons in a moon-colony backwater that is seldom mentioned and more seldom cared about planetside. That's what you're going to tell me when you take my son away, aren't you?"

"We're not yet sure what--"

"And you'd be RIGHT!" Radha suddenly burst out. "My son WAS born for greater things than what I could ever give him. I've known that since the moment I first held him in my arms! Since his father became ill Karna has already had to drop out of school to maintain the shop with me, and he's never once complained. He's never known anything but Anga and the shop and how to follow in his father's footsteps, but if he knew more I know that he would want more - and he would deserve more!"

Radha buried her face in her hands again, ashamed of her threatening tears. So much for her vow not to break down again.

Naabhi sat still for a while, watching Radha weep softly. Then he stood up, pushed back his chair, and said awkwardly, "Well, then, I'm going to have to report this to the Council immediately, and--"

"Wait," Radha suddenly said, lowering her hands from her face again.

Naabhi sat down again, quickly.

"I promised that I would tell you the whole truth, didn't I?" Radha said, her voice steely and determined, despite the redness around her eyes. "And I will. Now. Because some of what I just told you was a lie."

Naabhi sucked in his breath, quickly. "Radha--"

"I've always told Karna that I was his human parent," Radha said, "although I could never tell him the identity of his deva-parent. I told my son that his father and I prayed every single day for a child, and that part was true. And I told my son that the gods eventually heard and answered our prayers, and that part was also true. When Karna was old enough to start asking questions, I told him that one night while I was lying in bed alone, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of heavenly creatures surrounding me, and that my entire body was bathed in this lovely soft, warm light. And that when I woke up, I knew that I was pregnant. Sounds like a nice story, doesn't it? And because I felt as though I had been visited by many instead of one heavenly creature, I told my son that no, I could never say just for sure which god might have been his deva-parent."

"And... And that part was the lie?"

"Yes." Radha took a deep, shuddering breath. "What's true is that I could never tell my son the identity of his deva-parent, because I just didn't know. And the reason that I didn't know wasn't because I was visited by heavenly creatures or any other such nonsense. The truth is that I don't know because I'm _not_ Karna's human mother."

"Oh," said Naabhi, unable to say anything else.

"Fifteen years ago, my husband and I were still living and doing business planetside. We lived in a village far away from Hastinapura. We had a good life, and a good home, on the very edge of our village. I remember, there was this little stream that used to run along the edge of our property - my husband always liked to work outdoors and wash his tools in that stream.

"I remember that one morning, my husband was doing just that - washing his tools in the stream - and he told me that he heard a faint crying. He looked and saw an infant boy wrapped in blankets and floating in a basket in the stream," Radha said, shakily. She had never said these words to any other living soul before, and they tasted strange in her mouth. "He told me that he knew instantly that the baby had been abandoned. My husband took him into our home and unwrapped his blankets and saw the deva-blood markings on his body. He also saw that the baby was wearing golden earrings, a pair of tiny little golden earrings stuck through his ears, and my husband knew instantly that the baby must have been the blessing from the gods that we had both been praying for. He brought the baby up to me - I was lying in bed, feeling very ill. A week ago I had contracted a bad stomach virus and had been pretty much bedridden since then. I remember that the baby was crying, he was hungry. The instant that I saw my husband appear before me, holding that crying child, I felt my illness vanish. It was a miracle. I held out my arms for the baby and my husband gave him to me without saying a word. I held the baby and rocked him, and he stopped crying. I remember thinking that he was so beautiful, so perfect. I held him in my arms, and I touched his hair, and he looked up at me with these eyes - these incredible, pleading, hopeful eyes - I'll never forget that look in his eyes, not for the rest of my life. Then I felt a wetness inside my nightdress. I pulled down a part of my nightdress, and I saw that my breast was swollen and dribbling with milk. I suckled the baby, and I remember my husband just staring at me with this look on his face, like he couldn't believe a thing that he was seeing, like he thought that he was dreaming. And I smiled at him and I said, 'This is just a miracle, that's all.' Because I knew that the baby was _our_ son, he was _meant_ for us, he was our gift from the gods. The transformation of my body was proof enough of that."

Radha looked down at her hands. "At first, my husband was afraid. He and I both knew that the child was a devakin, and that if anybody ever found out about it, our son would be taken away from us. So we knew from the start what we were getting into. We knew that we would have to keep the fact that our son was a devakin a secret from the world, for as long as we possibly could, likely forever. But we also decided, back then, that we never wanted our son to know that he had been abandoned and found in dirty little stream behind our house. We didn't want him to grow up knowing that he had once been abandoned, wondering who his real parents were, possibly someday running off and doing something very stupid, and very foolish, trying to find out the truth about himself. We didn't want him to grow up burdened like that. Well, that sounds noble and all, but the truth is, my husband and I may have been a bit jealous, too. The child was ours and was meant for us, we knew that for certain, but I don't think that either he or I could bear the thought that our perfect, beautiful son had actually been born to some other man or woman first. Perhaps we wanted to be the only mother and father in Karna's heart. I don't know, it's difficult to say for certain - it's all hindsight now, I suppose. But we vowed never to tell Karna that he had been adopted by us. I always, always told him that I was his real mother. As far as I'm concerned, I am. My son drank the milk from _my _breasts, he grew up playing on _my _lap, he ate the food cooked by _my_hands, and he--" Radha's voice trembled for a moment, then she forced herself to continue. "I named him Vasushena. But because of his earrings, my husband nicknamed him 'Karna.' Then the name just sort of… stuck. For all intents and purposes, that's his name now. Karna."

"And you and your husband moved here fifteen years ago," Naabhi said, as if suddenly remembering something.

"Yes," Radha said, "because we had no choice. Nobody in our village would believe that Karna was our real son - they had all seen me in the months leading up to the day when we found Karna, they knew that I had never been pregnant. So my husband and I did what we had to - we ran. We ran away to this obscure little moon colony, where we would be far from the High Council and all of the planetside priests, where we could introduce ourselves to neighbors who had never seen us before and who would certainly never suspect that I had never shown any signs of being pregnant with my new son."

And then, Radha surprised herself by laughing. To her ears, however, her laugh sounded bitter.

Then she looked at Naabhi and asked, "Will I be charged, then?"

"We'll, uh..." Naabhi looked stunned, as if he were still trying to digest everything that Radha had told him. "We will have to charge you, ma'am. Failing to register your devakin son with the Council is a criminal offense."

" 'Ma'am'? But you were the one who told me that I was your friend. Since when was I a ma'am to you, Mr. Naabhi?"

"Unregistered Gifts can be dangerous. We have to send Karna planetside to get him tested and registered right away."

"Right away?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"No, please--!"

"Ma'am, it's the only safe thing to do."

"Please," Radha pleaded, "please let me see him, one last time. Just once, before he leaves. I want to tell him the truth. I _need _to tell him the truth. If I hurt him, then I'll hurt him, and I'll deserve anything that he says to me afterward. But I couldn't bear the thought of him finding out the truth from some stranger--"

"Listen, it's not as if you'll never see him again--"

"You know as well as I do that I won't!" Radha's fists were clenched in her lap, her eyes blazing. "They'll take him planetside and hand him over to the Council, and then that will be the end of it! The priests won't give him back to me, and you know that as well as I do!"

Naabhi looked at her for a long, long moment. Finally he said, "All right. I'll do this for you, since you're a friend. I'll call Parvata and have him bring your son over right away. But we can't give you long with him. I've already got a shuttle prepping to run your son down to the surface."

"Thank you," Radha said, clasping her hands together and closing her eyes. She felt momentarily relieved at Naabhi's words, but only momentarily. She knew that the most difficult part was still to come.

* * *

IV.

Karna was surprised when Mr. Parvata took him not to the spaceport, but to the police station instead. Karna's mother was there, and Mr. Parvata and Mr. Naabhi left Karna alone in a room with his mother.

Karna's mother threw her arms around her son and whispered into his ear, "Oh, my baby..."

Karna wrapped his arms around his mother and said nothing, willing himself not to cry. He understood now that this was their goodbye.

"My precious baby," Karna's mother said, running her hands through her son's hair.

" 'S okay, Mom," Karna said, even though he knew that it wasn't. But he was trying to do the manly thing, at least. "Tell Dad that I'm sorry."

"No, No, Karna, I'm the one who's sorry." Radha pulled herself away from her son and said, very slowly, "There's something that I have to tell you."

And then she told him everything. And her voice shook, but she did not cry. And when it was all over, Karna looked down at his feet and said, "Oh. Okay."

For a long moment, Radha stared at him, silently. Finally she asked, "Is that all? Is that all you have to say?"

Then Karna looked up at her and Radha was taken aback by the fierce, fiery anger she saw blazing in her son's eyes. But his anger was not directed at her. "What else am I supposed to say? _I don't care_, that's all there is to it! YOU'RE my mother and DAD is my father, and nothing that anybody could say to me could ever change that!"

"Oh, Karna--"

"_You're _ my mother," Karna said, his voice hitching, as he threw his arms around her one last time, "and nothing's going to change that, no matter how far away we have to be, okay?"

After a long, long minute, Karna finally extracted himself from his mother's arms and said, "Goodbye."

Then he left, and Radha felt her eyes burning as she watched him go.

* * *

V.

Mr. Chandraka held Karna's hand as they walked through the spaceport, something which Karna did not appreciate in the least, but at the moment, he felt too numb and hollowed-out and strangely exhausted to raise any protest. Mr. Chandraka had not even allowed Karna to go back home to pack up any of his belongings. He was being taken down to the surface with nothing but the clothes he was wearing (which, by the way, were still torn and tattered), likely never to return to Anga again.

"Sit down here," Mr. Chandraka said, guiding Karna over toward a bench. "Our shuttle will be ready soon."

Karna sat down, and Mr. Chandraka sat down beside him. Mr. Chandraka, at least, had packed himself an overnight bag while Karna had been at the police station with his mother. But Karna understood why he himself had not been allowed to pack anything. There was no longer any need for him to own anything. He belonged to the priests now.

Mr. Chandraka touched Karna's shoulder. "How are you doing?"

"Okay," Karna answered. What else was he supposed to say? That he was angry, hurt, scared, or shocked so much by the events of the past couple hours that his mind had succumbed to a strange sort of cold numbness? Karna did not want to leave without saying goodbye to his father. Karna did not want to be taken down to the surface and possibly assigned to a new, more_ fitting_ family - a family of priests or royals or military elite, perhaps - to spend the rest of his life with.

Karna suddenly looked down at his feet and thought, _I might have even come from one of those families in the first place, you know._

Karna clenched his fists and grit his teeth, viciously banishing the thought from his mind. His mother was his mother and his father was his father, and that was the end of that. Karna could never have and could never love a different father or mother, no matter what.

_But doesn't it make you just the last bit curious?_ a voice in the back of his mind whispered. _Knowing what you know now, can't you not help but wonder...?_

No. He couldn't let himself wonder. If he wondered about that, he would be wondering for the rest of his life. And that was a burden that Karna just couldn't bear. Besides, why would he want to track down his birth parents, if they had abandoned him to die in a backwater stream the way that his mother had described to him? If Karna's birth parents had truly been so heartless, then he knew that he would never want to see either of them face-to-face. Never.

"I know what will cheer you up," Mr. Chandraka suddenly said. "How about a snack?"

"No thank you."

"You might get hungry or thirsty while we're on the shuttle, so why not at least buy something now?"

"You can if you want to."

"I bet you like chocolate," Mr. Chandraka said, standing up. Then he added, "Stay right here, I'll be just a moment." Then he bustled off in search of a snack bar.

_He must really trust me to not run away,_ Karna thought. Then he realized, morosely, that he had absolutely no intention of running away, regardless. It was pointless, wasn't it? Where could he go, anyway? Anga itself had few places to hide, and if Karna tried to venture outside of Anga's domes, he would surely get himself killed, or possibly gruesomely exploded from the lack of atmospheric pressure on the moon's surface. Besides, Karna looked around and could see that although Anga's single spaceport was, at the moment, mostly devoid of people, it was crawling with security cameras and a few security bots rumbling along on their outdated, squeaking treads. Karna knew that if he tried to run, he wouldn't get far.

Karna swung his legs back and forth and sat, pondering not his fate, which was in the future, but last night, which was in the past.

Before the prince and his retainers had come and ruined everything, there had been last night, and last night had been good. Since his father had fallen ill, Karna had been forced to drop out of school and work all day every day keeping his father's shop in business. But Karna had good friends, and they had never forgotten about him. Tejas and Plavaga had shown up on his doorstep a few minutes before midnight, when Karna had still been closing down the register and filling out the logs for the day. They had taken him to a park and nearly everyone from school had been there, drinking and laughing and sitting on blankets and gazing at the stars glittering through the domed sky above them. "You need a break," Tejas had told him. And Karna remembered that Shrutakiirti had been there with her friends, and that he had watched Shrutakiirti pouring drinks for her friends and clapping her hands when Plavaga had begun strumming his guitar, her dark eyes and smooth skin illuminated by starlight and painted with nighttime shadows.

Karna finally felt a lump in his throat when he remembered Shrutakiirti. Shrutakiirti's parents were grocers who lived just up the street from Karna. Shrutakiirti had used to steal fruit and chocolates from her parents' store, and run over to Karna's home, and then sit on the fence surrounding the yard behind his house, watching as Karna and his father test-fired the weapons that they had finished repairing. And then Shrutakiirti would give Karna a chocolate and tell him that he must have been the greatest marksman in Anga, and Karna remembering thinking that Shrutakiirti's neck moles were kind of gross and that she always smelled like a girl, and Karna also remembered looking at Shrutakiirti one day and suddenly realizing that her moles had been beautiful all along, and that he was an idiot for not having realized it sooner.

Karna wondered where Shrutakiirti was, and what she was doing at the moment. News traveled fast in Anga. Karna knew that half of his neighborhood had seen him and his mother being dragged by the police out of their home and into the street, Karna's mother in handcuffs and Karna's sweater and undershirt torn and exposing his neck and shoulder markings for anyone to see. Surely Shrutakiirti must have heard the news by now. Karna wondered what she thought of him, now. Did she care that he was a devakin? Was she angry that he had never told her? Was she at all sad that he was being taken away? Would she miss him? What if she didn't miss him? What if he never saw her again?

"Get your hands off me, I know where I'm going!" somebody suddenly shouted, crankily.

"Old man, you are six shades of crazy if you expect us to trust you after that little stunt that you pulled at the station," a familiar voice replied. Karna recognized the voice - it belonged to Mr. Vihanga, another police officer. Karna craned his neck and saw, behind him, that Mr. Vihanga was grasping an old man's arm and forcibly dragging the old man towards the area where Karna was currently sitting. The old man had white hair and a long beard and yellow teeth and mottled skin, and was wearing a closed and fastened and obviously-too large brown overcoat, and a pair of brown boots, and, Karna assumed, rags underneath.

Karna knew that it was rude to stare, but he couldn't help himself. The old man looked like a renunciant, and Karna had never actually seen one in the flesh before, let alone one being dragged along by a uniformed police officer.

Mr. Vihanga led the old man over to a bench right next to Karna's, and sat him down forcefully. "I need a bottle of water if I'm going to get on board that dusty dry deathtrap!" the old man wheezed, angrily. Mr. Vihanga frowned, but then let go of the old man's arm and turned around, marching off in the direction that Mr. Chandraka had gone a moment earlier.

Aha, Karna thought. The old man must have been a renunciant, or else Mr. Vihanga would not have been required to pay him the respect of giving him what he asked for.

The old man suddenly turned his head and fixed his blazing, wild eyes squarely on Karna. "You, boy!" he barked. "Are they deporting you, too?"

Karna was startled by the old man's attention, but he decided not to be afraid. "Yeah," he said. "Kind of."

"Oh? And what crime did you commit?"

"I was born."

The old man immediately doubled over, clutching his stomach and laughing a phlegmy, rattling laugh. "Oh, oh!" he roared. "You and me both!"

"...It's really not that funny."

"No," the old man said, cutting off his own laughter sharply, "I suppose not."

"I'm Karna," Karna said, bowing his head slightly, because he had been taught better than to be rude to renunciants.

"Well, Karna, you look like a mess," the old man said, his eyes falling upon Karna's torn sweater. "Did you pick a fight?"

"I--"

"I picked a fight, that's why I'm here now," the old man said with a wheezy chuckle. "Damn brat deserved it, though. And can you believe, boy, the nerve of your goldbuttons! They tried to put me in HANDCUFFS as if I were some type of filthy criminal! ME! It's certainly not MY fault that I was placed in this world to punish the wicked. How am I supposed to do my job if your goldbuttons keep getting in my way?"

"Sir, I--"

"And the OTHER me!" the old man continued, jabbing a knobby finger angrily in Karna's general direction. "I wasted my one and only comm session trying to call up the _other _me, the one down on the surface, but the timing's all wrong - all wrong! - and they told me that he's only two years old and that his parents are _dairy farmers_, can you BELIEVE the absurdity of it all? So the other me can't help me and your goldbuttons think I'm crazy and now I'm being deported, deported, deported like some common criminal!"

Now Karna really didn't know what to say. He had never been face-to-face with a genuinely insane person, either. _I can't believe I'm going to have to spend three hours on a shuttle with this geezer,_ he thought with an inward groan.

"Boy. Devakin," the old man rasped.

"Yes, sir."

"You're the boy who fixes weapons, aren't you? I've heard of you."

Karna was taken aback by this, but the old man simply went on, "I can see those calluses on your hands, though, and I can tell you that those calluses aren't the type that you get from fixing weapons. You'd have to have been firing a bowstring for at least a decade to get calluses like that."

Karna looked down at his hands and mumbled, "Yeah, kind of."

"Even though a weaponsmith like you is never supposed to actually _use _a weapon?"

Karna said nothing.

The old man grinned at Karna and said, "I bet you're good."

Karna still said nothing, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that the old man's teeth were crooked and yellow.

"I bet you're real good," the old man said, standing up slowly.

Karna tensed.

"Well, Karna? Aren't you a good marksman?"

"Y-Yes, sir."

"What do you prefer to shoot with? Rifles? Guns? Lasers? Crossbows?"

"Um... I know it's kind of old-fashioned, but..."

"But..?" The old man stepped toward Karna and then stopped when he was standing right in front of him.

"I kind of like to use a wooden longbow. Not a modern one that's all metal and glass, but a real old-fashioned one, the wooden ones, the ones that give me splinters," Karna said, helpless to tear his eyes away from the intense gaze of the old man staring down at him.

"I thought you would say that," the old man said in his rumbling, phlegmy voice.

"Why?" asked Karna, rather calmly, although his mind was whispering fervently to itself_, please don't come any closer please oh please don't come any closer you're a scary old man and you smell like dangerous oh please oh please don't touch me._

But the old man reached out with his dirt-crusted, bony finger, and rested the ball of his finger on Karna's forehead. "You have a Gift," he said.

Karna winced, but found himself unable to draw away from the old man's touch. "Mister, please--"

"I know what your Gift is, Karna. It's a devaweapon."

"Mister, I--"

"It's a devaweapon, given to you by your deva-parent. Why don't you show it to me?"

"Mister, I don't know how--"

"You, what are you doing?!" Mr. Chandraka's voice suddenly shouted, from what seemed like very far away. "_Get away from him_!"

But Karna could not turn his head to look at Mr. Chandraka, who now sounded as if he were running toward him. Karna could only feel the old man's warm, dirty finger pressed against his forehead, and could only see the old man's fiery, crazed eyes locking his own in their intense stare. "I think you do know how, Karna," the old man said, "so show me."

And then everything was fire.

Karna felt the heat screaming inside of him faster than he could think. Then he breathed and there was orange and white fire exploding out from his hands, racing around the edges of the bench that he was sitting on, swirling around the old man's feet and legs, dancing on the floor around him, racing up his own arms. It was hot and it burned and it was too bright and Karna closed his eyes and heard shouting and screaming around him.

Then Karna felt the world around himself lurch - and something inside of him seemed to lurch, to move, to heave and shift as well.

Then Karna opened his eyes, and he was no longer sitting. He was standing in front of the bench, holding out his arm, and there was an arc of white flame flowing through his clenched hand. Karna breathed again, and the flame thickened, slowed, and deepened from white to yellow to orange to red to a glossy, burnished brown. And then Karna was holding an enormous, creaking wooden bow in his grip.

There was a thump, and the sound of glass breaking.

Karna turned his head, slowly, and saw Mr. Chandraka standing frozen a few steps away from him, his arms held out and trembling, two broken bottles of soda at his feet. "Th-th-that's Vijaya," he said, his eyes widening. "A weapon of the gods."

Karna looked at the bow in his hands. It was old and worn, and its string looked frayed. It was also large, and it certainly should have felt heavy, although it was light in Karna's hand.

_Some bow,_ Karna thought. _Now where am I supposed to get an--?_

A lick of flame danced across Karna's other hand, and then he was holding a long, sharp

_--arrow._

Karna looked around, then, and realized that the spaceport had fallen utterly silent. The old man was standing at Karna's side, looking smug. Mr. Chandraka was standing in a rapidly-spreading puddle of soda, oblivious to the fact that his feet were getting soaked. Mr. Vihanga was standing a few feet away from Mr. Chandraka, equally as flabbergasted, his jaw hanging open in shock. The few other passengers in the spaceport, even the security bots, were frozen and staring at Karna, too.

Karna swallowed. Another glance told him that there was no trace of fire left anywhere on the ground or on the bench where he had been sitting a moment ago. Nothing appeared to be the slightest bit burnt or charred.

"I knew it would be a bow," the old man said, clapping a hand on Karna's shoulder.

"Mister, what--?"

"That is Vijaya," the old man said, solemnly, "your Gift. A god gave it to you when you were born, and now it will be in your hand any time that you desire it to be. It is a devaweapon, a part of your heart. It can never be separated from you. But you must be careful, Karna," the old man said, touching the arrow that Karna had clenched in his other hand, "for Vijaya's arrows are made from small pieces of your heart, too. Every time you fire an arrow, you lose a piece of yourself. This is the price you pay for wielding the power of Vijaya."

"But," Karna said, swallowing, "does that mean that someday I'll run out of arrows?"

"No," the old man said, kindly. "The human heart is an amazing thing, Karna. It can heal itself no matter how badly wounded. But you must be careful, of course. Never use too many of your arrows at once. Do not use your Vijaya blindly or in a rage."

Karna felt faint; he felt his head swimming. He closed his hand, and felt Vijaya - and the arrow that he had been holding - suddenly vanish from his hands, leaving behind only a flash of warmth and a faint tingling in his chest. He slumped back down onto the bench where he had previously been sitting, suddenly exhausted.

"You're not ready yet," the old man said.

Karna opened his eyes, slowly. "No. I'm not."

"Karna! _Karna!_" Mr. Vihanga rushed forward and was suddenly kneeling beside Karna, trying to push a bottle of water into his hands. "Drink this," he said, then turned his head toward the old man and snarled, "You! What did you _do _to him?!"

"I awoke his Gift," the old man said. "Although it probably was too early for him."

"Go over there, and SIT!" Mr. Vihanga shouted, pointing at a bench several rows down.

"Very well." The old man stepped away from Karna.

But, with a tremendous effort, Karna lifted his head and pleaded, "Wait!"

The old man paused in mid-step, then turned his head back toward Karna. There was still that smug smile on his withered old face. He had clearly been expecting this reaction.

"Help me," Karna croaked, his throat suddenly drier than it had ever felt before. "I don't know how to… V-Vijaya, I…"

The old man stepped back toward Karna. "Are you asking me to teach you how to use your devaweapon?"

Karna nodded.

"I accept your request."

The old man made as if to sit down next to Karna again, but Mr. Vihanga suddenly stepped toward him angrily. "Leave the boy alone! I told you to go _sit over there!_"

"I can't leave this boy," the old man said, haughtily. "He's my apprentice."

Mr. Vihanga clenched his fists angrily. "You're a criminal! You can't just--"

"Enough," Mr. Chandraka suddenly said.

Mr. Vihanga fell silent, and Mr. Chandraka stepped forward slowly, solemnly, pushing Mr. Vihanga aside.

Then Mr. Chandraka bowed low in front of the old man, and touched his feet, reverently.

Mr. Vihanga choked and spluttered with surprise, but Mr. Chandraka simply said, "If you ask for the boy, he is yours, my Lord."

"Ah," the old man said, grinning his sparse-toothed grin. "I like this one," he said to Vihanga, pointing down at Mr. Chandraka, who was still kneeling at his feet. "This one can see what you can't. Wisdom. You should try it sometime."

"However, my Lord..." Mr. Chandraka began, hesitatingly. "It is a law that Karna must be scanned and registered by the Council of Brahmins at Hastinapura..."

The old man sighed. "If that is such a terribly important law, then I suppose we have no choice." He glared at Mr. Vihanga. "I've already seen how much trouble I can get myself into by disobeying your meaningless, silly laws."

Mr. Vihanga opened his mouth, clearly preparing to say something angry, when Mr. Chandraka quickly cut him off. "Come with us, my Lord, to meet with the High Council. Once they lay their eyes upon your Lordship, they will surely understand why the boy should go with you."

"Wait a minute!" Karna finally find the courage to interject.

The old man turned expectantly toward Karna. "Yes?"

"I, er… I don't even know your _name_."

"I am Parashurama," the old man said, "and I will teach you to use your Gift, and I will make you the greatest archer Kuru has ever known."

Karna glared at the old man, sullenly, suspiciously. A moment ago he had been begging for the old man's help, but now that he had had a few moments to calm down and collect his thoughts, Karna was beginning to have his doubts again. Vijaya was terrifying, of course, but Karna was beginning to think that, with some time and effort, he would be able to master the divine bow on his own. Why had he begged this obviously crazy old man for his help? Karna didn't want to be anywhere near the so-called Parashurama anymore.

"You were born for greatness," the old man said. "But there's nobody on Kuru or Panchala or anywhere else within hundreds of light-years that could teach you to use that bow properly. Nobody but me."

Karna crossed his arms over his chest. "Maybe I don't want greatness," he said, stubbornly. "Maybe I just want to say here and fix weapons with my father."

"Oh? You don't want fame and greatness?" Parashurama's eyes twinkled mischievously. "You'd rather stay here as a peasant for the rest of your life, fixing weapons for royals and military elite who treat you like dirt, unable to ever fire or legitimately own a weapon of your own, even though you are - or you could be - better at it than any and all of King Dhritarashtra's sons put together? Well, I suppose, if that is your choice, then... But what a pity, Karna, that the world will never know that you are the greatest archer of your era, what a shame that the world will never see and tremble before your Vijaya."

Karna looked down at his feet.

"You were given Vijaya for a reason," the old man said. "You'll never master Vijaya, you'll never fulfill your own destiny, if you stay here."

Karna took a deep, shuddering breath. Destiny. It was a grand word, both exciting and terrifying. He didn't want to particularly fulfill any sort of grand destiny, as far as he was concerned. It would have been better, safer, to just stay in Anga for the rest of his life, to stay with his mother and his father and their little shop with Shrutakiirti just down the street and the domes over his head and--

And now that he had heard the word _destiny,_ Karna knew that if he turned his back on it now, the thought of all of that unfilled potential would haunt him for the rest of his life. If he never fulfilled his destiny, he would never know what his destiny _was_, and the weight of Vijaya and all of his unanswered questions would burn in his heart until the day that he died.

"All right," Karna said, standing up slowly, shakily. "I'll go with you, old man."

"Parashurama."

"Whatever."

"Call me by my name, boy."

"If you think you deserve to be called as much."

Parashurama laughed his rattling old-man's laugh. "I like you, boy!" he said. "You have fire in your heart."

Mr. Chandraka was standing upright again, brushing the dirt of the spaceport floor off his knees. "Wonderful, then, it's settled! It's off to the High Council for all of us." Mr. Chandraka was, for some reason, grinning like a child at a festival. "Just wait until they see you," he gushed excitedly at Parashurama. "It will be a celebration like you've never seen before!"

Parashurama took Karna's hand in his. "Well?" he asked.

"Okay, I guess," Karna said, as Mr. Chandraka began walking toward the gate where their shuttle was likely already awaiting them, and Parashurama and Karna followed. "But, sir? Why does Mr. Chandraka call you 'my Lord'?"

Parashurama started. "What... you can't see it?"

"See what?"

"My obvious divinity," Parashurama said, without a trace of joking in his voice.

"Honestly? No."

"Ah, my boy," Parashurama said, "then you still have much, much to learn."

* * *

To be continued. 


	4. Chapter 02: Partings

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti and Steelehearts for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

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CHAPTER TWO: PARTINGS

* * *

"Wake up wake up wake up wake up!"

Bhima groaned and rolled over, but it was no use - Arjuna was jumping up and down on his bed as relentlessly as he could manage with his tiny body. Bhima opened his eyes, slowly, and blinked at the sight of the gloom that had filled his bedroom. It was late in the morning, he sensed instinctively, but there was hardly any sunlight filtering in through his dark windows, and Bhima could hear thunder rumbling in the distance.

_Aha_, he thought to himself, _no wonder Arjuna is in such a good mood._

"Come on, wake up!" Arjuna whined, having given up jumping up and down on Bhima's bed in favor of pulling Bhima's hair angrily. "You're so _lazy_."

"All right, Pumpkin," Bhima groaned, pushing Arjuna away from his head and sitting up slowly.

"I am NOT a pumpkin!"

"Are you sure?" Bhima asked. " 'Cause you're orange and fat like a pumpkin," he said, then he poked at Arjuna's head and added, "You've even got a stem!"

"I do NOT have a stem--"

"Oh, yes you do. It's big and green and everything."

"Bhima--!"

"What? I'm just telling the truth."

Arjuna leapt down from Bhima's bed, in a sudden panic, and ran over to a mirror on the other side of Bhima's room. "You liar!" he squealed indignantly, when he saw his reflection on the mirror. "You're a stupidhead liar, Bhima!"

"Yes, but you're the stupidhead who believed me," Bhima said as he rummaged through his closet and began pulling on his clothes.

In truth, although Arjuna was short, he was not anywhere near fat or orange, and he did not, fortunately, have a green stem. Arjuna was six years old and was still small for his age, although other than Bhima, Arjuna's other family was generally too tactful to constantly point it out for him. Still, Arjuna seemed painfully, almost precociously aware of his height deficiency. It did not help that even at six years old, Arjuna's eyesight was already terrible, and he seemed to have a natural tendency toward clumsiness. He wore thick glasses, which he resented almost as much as his nickname "Pumpkin." Although when Arjuna was old enough, Bhima knew that he would be able to get rid of his glasses and have surgery to repair his eyes. The glasses would be gone someday, Bhima knew, but the horrid nickname of Pumpkin would probably stick to Arjuna for the rest of his life.

Well, at least Arjuna didn't have to put up with being the baby of the entire family anymore.

Two years ago, Arjuna had finally gotten his own baby brothers - a pair of twins named Nakula and Sahadeva. They had been born to his other-mother, Madri. The birth of Madri's twin sons had come as a surprise to almost everyone in the palace, especially when the children had been born as devakin. Bhima had heard one or two references to "Kunti's mantra" in conversations between his Grandpa Bhisma and his father, and he had his own suspicions. But Bhima figured that if his parents chose not to reveal something to him, then it was not his place to pester them with his curiosity. Either way, Bhima had already observed that as far as Arjuna was concerned, having baby brothers was pretty great - they were small and lumpy and easy to boss around, since they couldn't really talk back to him.

However, Arjuna did not seem particularly pleased with the fact that a few months ago, Nakula had said his first word, which had been "Pumpkin." Or rather, "Pumkim," the way that Nakula had pronounced it, pointing right at Arjuna as he spoke.

Arjuna had tried unsuccessfully to popularize the nicknames "squash" and "gourd" for his baby brothers, just so that he wouldn't have to be alone in his misery. But alas, nobody else seemed to use such nicknames.

"How come you always get in here so easily?" Bhima suddenly asked Arjuna, as he pulled on his socks and boots.

"Your guards let me in because they like me," Arjuna said, sticking out his tongue.

Bhima sighed and rolled his eyes. He was beginning to no longer appreciate the fact that the guards posted outside of his chambers every night apparently had a sense of humor, or at least a soft spot where Arjuna was concerned.

"Come on, you're so slow," Arjuna whined, tugging at Bhima's sleeve.

Bhima glanced out his window and groaned inwardly. Three inches from the glass of his windowpanes, the world dissolved into a wall of water. Torrents of rain lashed at the glass and thunder rumbled in the darkened sky. Bhima knew exactly what this meant--

"Let's go OUTSIDE!" Arjuna demanded, impatiently.

"We're not going outside," Bhima said sternly, reaching down to grab Arjuna by the back of his shirt and tossing him up into the air as easily as if he were as light as a feather. To Bhima, he was. Arjuna shrieked angrily at this violation of his dignity, but then Bhima caught him in his arms and swung him up behind his neck. "And why do I have to be the one babysitting you today, anyway?" Bhima asked as Arjuna only halfway reluctantly settled into his piggy-back position behind Bhima's neck. "Where's your Nana?"

"Nana said that_you _would play with me today."

"Great. The whole world is conspiring against me."

Arjuna leaned forward and wrapped his tiny arms around Bhima's neck. "Can we go outside? Pleeeeeeease?"

Bhima sighed through his nose. Arjuna knew his secret weakness, apparently - he was helpless in the face of Arjuna's hugs.

"Why can't you just stay inside on a rainy day," Bhima said, as one last desperate appeal against his impending doom, "like a normal kid?"

Arjuna wrinkled his nose. "Who would want to stay _inside _on a day like today?!" Arjuna apparently still did not understand why everyone that he knew seemed to have such an aversion to getting wet.

"Outside, outside, outside," Bhima was singing gloomily as he bounced Arjuna up and down, stomping around his room. "I'm taking a stupid pumpkin outside, so that he can catch pneumonia and die and then I won't have to go out in the raaaaaaain anymore--" Bhima suddenly stopped. "Where's your coat, Pumpkin?"

"I don't need a coat."

"I suppose you don't need an umbrella, either."

"There's no point in going out in the rain if you can't get wet."

* * *

II.

Bhima led Arjuna down the palace hallways outside his quarters, and into an outdoor courtyard. "This one should be relatively sheltered from the rain," Arjuna heard Bhima mutter under his breath. But of course, it wasn't. With a sigh, Bhima opened his umbrella and stood on top of a relatively dry rock, while Arjuna jumped and splashed around the muddy puddles around him.

_It's Bhima's fault that he's not having any fun,_ Arjuna reasoned as he splashed around. There was so much mud and so much rain, it was such a perfect day for making a mess, and stupid Bhima had to stand there with his umbrella and his coat and his rubber boots and the scowl on his face, shivering and refusing to move.

"Come ON," Arjuna finally begged, tugging futilely at Bhima's immovable leg, "Nana said you would play with me and I wanna play hide and go seek!"

"You can do whatever you damn well please, but I'm not moving," Bhima repeated. He was standing on a rock in the midst of a mud puddle and acting as if he were standing on a rock in the midst of a pool of boiling lava, as if one misstep would mean certain death. Or at least irreparably soaked and muddy boots.

Arjuna scowled. "If you just stand there, then it doesn't count as playing with me."

"Look, if you want to go _inside _and play hide and seek like a normal person, then I'll gladly join you. But right now? You can ruin your clothes and catch pneumonia and die and have Mama get real angry at you, if you'd like, but count me out."

Arjuna wiped his runny nose on the back of his hand and paused, furrowing his brow with the effort of deep, concentrated thought. He had to find a way to force Bhima to do _something _fun with him, or else the whole day would be an entire waste. Arjuna had not been alive for terribly long, but, deep within his secret heart of hearts, he had already figured out one thing, and that was that Bhima would always, always be his most favorite brother of all. Of course, he would never tell that to another living soul. But what mattered was that Arjuna knew that it was true. Not to say that his other brothers weren't also good, of course. Arjuna loved his oldest brother Yudhisthira. And his baby twin brothers weren't too bad, either, although Arjuna would never be able to forgive Nakula for the "Pumkim" incident. But if Arjuna had to choose between being as smart as his brother Yudhisthira, or being as strong and cool and as good with a sword as his brother Bhima, Arjuna would much rather be as strong and cool and as good with a sword as Bhima was. And indeed, Arjuna did make that promise to himself, often as he lay awake in his bed on uncomfortably cloudless and therefore sleepless nights - that someday, he would grow up to be a fearsome, strong warrior just like his brother Bhima. In a few years Arjuna would be old enough for Grandpa Bhisma to start teaching him how to use a sword, and then Arjuna would show them all. He was going to be so graceful and so deadly and so fearsome with his sword that nobody would ever dare to tease him by calling him "Pumpkin" ever again. Even Bhima, terrible and terrifying Bhima, would then bow down to his little brother as an equal, and he would apologize for every time that he had ever called Arjuna "Pumpkin." And then his brother Yudhisthira and his cousin Duryodhana wouldn't have to be afraid of _anything_ because they'd have _Arjuna_ to protect their kingdom with, and Arjuna's papa would take him aside and tell him that he had been his favorite son all along, and Arjuna would become so famous that someday people would whisper his name in the same breath with which they whispered names like _Rama _and_Hanuman_ and---

"Stop getting your boogers on me," Bhima grumped as he pushed Arjuna forcefully away from his leg.

Arjuna wiped his nose as his pleasant daydreams evaporated. Reality, as it was, came pouring down around him - cold and wet and muddy. Arjuna was at least six years younger than Chitraka, his youngest cousin. He was the baby of the family, and not even the arrival of Nakula and Sahadeva had really changed that. He was small and short and pathetically weak and clumsy, especially compared to his enormously tall, large, and strong brother Bhima. Even Arjuna's brother Yudhisthira, while not particularly good with a sword, at least had the advantage of being tall and looking imposing when he needed to be. Neither Yudhisthira nor Bhima had ever had to wear glasses or deal with a stupid nanny like Nana or known what it was like to be teased and picked on by one hundred cousins, all of whom were older and bigger than you, almost every single day. And Yudhisthira was always busy running the kingdom, or at least pretending to run the kingdom, and Bhima was always busy either showing off with his sword or advising Yudhisthira or studying this or that about the military, and neither of them _ever _had any time for Arjuna. And Arjuna's papa was always busy being sick, and Arjuna's first mama and second mama were usually around but that didn't count because mamas were _boring _and always telling him to sit up straight or not scratch his nose or not chew on his pens and pencils.

Arjuna's papa used to go camping in the forest with Arjuna's older brothers. Arjuna was always too little to come along, they had told him. Arjuna had deeply resented this abandonment for as long as he could remember. It wasn't _fair _that Yudhisthira and Bhima got to spend special time with Papa, while Arjuna didn't. But last year and this year, that had changed. Bhima had refused to go on the camping trip, and that meant that for three whole days Arjuna claimed special time between himself and Bhima, because that was only fair, wasn't it? The logic behind this idea, or lack thereof, didn't particularly bother Arjuna. What bothered him is that Nana had arranged things so that Arjuna could spend the day with his brother, even Arjuna's god-papa Indra had arranged the weather so that the day could not have been more perfect for play outside, and now Bhima had to go and be a spoilsport about everything.

Bhima glanced up at the bruised and blackened sky above him, like a condemned man taking a good long look at his own hung and ready noose, and commented, more to the Gods above than to himself or to Arjuna, "I hope that Papa isn't caught out in this."

* * *

III.

"In retrospect, we probably deserve this," Duryodhana said, gloomily.

Yudhisthira nodded glumly. He was currently standing ankle-deep in swirling mud, his clothes soaked and clinging to his thin body, his hair glued to his drenched face, and, incredibly, he was still getting wetter by the moment. The tree that he and Duryodhana were standing beneath was not doing much in the way of sheltering them from the storm. Yudhisthira took small comfort in the fact that at the moment, Duryodhana, who usually always managed to look so handsome and put-together, even after three days of camping in a cave in the woods, had finally succumbed to the forces of nature. Now the handsome prince looked more like a drenched rat than anything else.

" 'We'll be back before it starts raining,' " Duryodhana continued, mocking himself. " 'Just because it's thundering doesn't mean that it's going to rain yet.' I mean, really, why did you _listen _to me?!"

"It was four in the morning," Yudhisthira said, through chattering teeth. He could no longer feel his toes, which he assumed were still swimming in his waterlogged boots. "You sounded persuasive. And I had been sleeping on a rock for two nights straight."

"Come on," Duryodhana finally said, stepping out from beneath their inefficient covering of foliage. "We're soaked whether we stay here or walk back, so let's walk back."

Yudhisthira followed him glumly, stomping through the squelching mud beneath his feet.

Yudhisthira's annual camping trips with his father had become a tradition a mere three years ago, when Madri had become pregnant and Yudhisthira's father's health had taken a turn for the better. Yudhisthira remembered the first time that his father had insisted on taking him and Bhima camping in the wilderness where Yudhisthira had previously spent most of his life. Uncle Vidura and all of Papa's doctors had been horrified at the suggestion. Papa had mysteriously seemed to be getting healthier, true, but nobody had expected a few days of roughing it to be anything but bad for the former king's health. As it turned out, quite the opposite had happened. Yudhisthira's father just kept getting better and better. He gained weight, color returned to his cheeks, and his hands had stopped shaking long ago. Yudhisthira knew that his father and his mothers and Grandpa Bhisma were deliberately keeping the details hidden from him, but he had heard the word "remission" tossed around enough to be able to get his hopes up.

Yudhisthira had loved camping with his Papa. For him, it had been a long-overdue return to the clean and quiet serenity of the forest that he remembered from his childhood. That, and he had gotten to finally spend some time with his father, and with Bhima. For the past several years Yudhisthira had been so busy taking lessons with Grandpa Bhisma, meeting politicians and dignitaries, giving speeches, sitting in on Parliament debates, and worrying about which of six possible forks to use first during a formal dinner, that he hardly had time to even see his own family anymore.

Being groomed to become a king, Yudhisthira had slowly discovered over the years, was not nearly as difficult or as impossible as he had once thought it to be. But it was nevertheless all-consuming in every sense that mattered. Yudhisthira lived, breathed, and slept politics; he even dreamt about tax laws. But Duryodhana had been by his side constantly, and it was indeed true that misery loved company. Duryodhana was also kept so busy smooching with politicians and learning the ins and outs of health care reform, that he also had virtually no time to see his own brothers. He always seemed to be with Yudhisthira during his waking moments. Neither of the two of them had gotten a decent night's sleep in over four years, they both agreed that the current Minister of Conservation was a prick, and they both not-so-secretly wished that Grandpa Bhisma would just hurry up and _pick_ _one _of them to be crowned king already, so that at least one of them would be able to retire from their hectic life.

Duryodhana had taken Yudhisthira under his wing from the beginning (well, almost from the beginning) many years ago. It was Duryodhana who had taught Yudhisthira how to suck up to his own ministers, how to discredit the conspiracy theorists on the evening news, how to speak in public without sounding, as Duryodhana had described it, like he had a metal rod shoved up his--

"Can't go this way, it looks like," Duryodhana suddenly said, snapping Yudhisthira out of his train of thought and back into his rain-soaked reality.

Yudhisthira looked down and saw that a small stream that he and Duryodhana had walked over that morning had now become a raging torrent of water. It was too wide to jump across, and too deep and fast-moving to be safe to wade across. Duryodhana turned his head, waiting for Yudhisthira to tell him where to go. He and Yudhisthira both knew that Duryodhana had no sense of direction in the wilderness.

"This way," Yudhisthira said, slogging up the bank of the impromptu rapids, hoping that if he led Duryodhana further up the incline of sloping land that they were currently trying to cross, he would find a point where the stream was still narrow enough to risk jumping across.

The previous year, Papa had invited Duryodhana along on the camping trip. That was the first time that Bhima had refused to come along.

Yudhisthira knew that his papa and his cousin Duryodhana had always liked each other. "Your dad is _so amazing_," Duryodhana used to tell Yudhisthira all the time. Duryodhana was always impressed by Pandu's stories about life in the wilderness, by his amazing archery skills, and by the memorable time that he had told off the Minister of Defense with harsh words and a rude gesture, in front of the entire assembled Parliament, no less. Duryodhana had always particularly loathed that (now former) Minister of Defense.

But Duryodhana and Bhima had not gotten along so well. Grandpa Bhisma had wisely decided some time ago that the two were never to practice with their swords at the same time; Bhima was stronger than Duryodhana and brasher and louder and more of a scene-stealer at public events; Duryodhana, in turn, was sulky and resentful whenever he had to be in the same place as Bhima for more than a few moments at a time. And Duryodhana's hundred younger siblings, out of loyalty to their eldest brother, shared his attitude toward Bhima right down to the letter. Bhima was convinced that Duryodhana was a spoiled, manipulative, and selfish pighead (which was often true); Duryodhana was convinced that Bhima was a reckless, uncouth, and moronic thundering monster (which was also often true). Years ago Yudhisthira had given up any hope of ever getting the two of them to see eye-to-eye. Yudhisthira had always silently hoped that someday Bhima would realize that he was hopelessly outnumbered in his silent, ongoing feud against Duryodhana, and that he would just, one day, give up and call a truce. But then again, Yudhisthira knew his brother Bhima's heart better than he even knew his own, and he knew that there was a greater chance of Arjuna being struck by lightning than there was of stubborn, hard-headed Bhima ever forgiving a grudge.

But even without Bhima, the camping trip last year had been great, as had been the one this year, at least up until this morning. For one thing, it was rare that Yudhisthira ever got to see Duryodhana out of his element, and the wild and rough forest hundreds of miles north of Hastinapura was definitely out of his element. On the first day of their first camping trip together, Yudhisthira quickly discovered that, even taking into account the "cabin in the woods" that Duryodhana had once mentioned to him, Duryodhana had never once actually lived, eaten, or slept in a place that wasn't climate-controlled, not once in his life. He had certainly never slept on a rock or bathed in a river or hunted for his own food before. But Duryodhana was the type of person who made a habit of exuding so much self-confidence that he regularly fooled people into thinking that he was in his element, so he had gone along gamely with everything, even if Yudhisthira had seen Duryodhana's face turn slightly gray that first time that Yudhisthira's papa had demonstrated how to skin a deer.

Duryodhana had wanted very much to impress Yudhisthira's papa, however, and this year he had already downed and skinned a deer all by himself.

Yudhisthira knew that the forest would never be to Duryodhana what it was to him. But that was all right. Duryodhana had not rejected the forest, and it had not rejected him; and this was how Yudhisthira knew, without a doubt, that his cousin Duryodhana was not a bad person. No matter what Bhima might think.

Today was supposed to have been their last day camping together. Duryodhana had woken Yudhisthira up, discreetly, several hours before dawn, whispering excitedly into his ear. The two of them should go out on an early hunt and surprise Yudhisthira's papa by bringing back a trophy as a gift for him. Duryodhana knew full well that Yudhisthira's papa had a fetish for antlers and horns and stuffed heads of whatever-you-please that he liked to mount throughout the palace at Hastinapura. Yudhisthira had thought that this was a brilliant idea - it would make his papa so happy - and at the time, neither of them had stopped to consider that they might not be able to find any decent prey before they lost their race against the storm clouds gathering overhead.

Yudhisthira knew that his papa would have been awake for a while by now, and he would be wondering what had happened to them. Well, at least Papa was safe and dry inside the cave that the three of them had slept in last night. Yudhisthira and Duryodhana were about as far from dry as they could be.

Yudhisthira kept trudging along the edge of the angry rapids that were now blocking him and Duryodhana from the direction that they needed to go, but it was to no avail. The frothing stream neither narrowed enough for them to risk jumping across, nor offered any rocks for them to climb across.

Duryodhana suddenly reached up and placed his cold, sopping hand on Yudhisthira's equally cold, sopping shoulder. "Hold up," he said, "look."

Yudhisthira turned his head and glanced across the stream, and felt his heart leap into his throat.

An old man dressed in rags was standing there, and he was not wet.

The old man had no hair and grinned at them with no teeth. He stood in the midst of a falling torrent of rain, in a clear space between two trees, and his skin was smooth and dry. His ragged clothing rustled slightly around his frame, ruffled by a gentle breeze that shared no relation with the raging winds whipping the rainwater around the rest of the forest.

"You two want to cross my stream, don't you?" the old man said. His voice was strong and clear, reaching Yudhisthira's ears as easily as if there was not the roar of the engorged stream or the thunder of rain on wood and leaves filling the space between the two of them.

Duryodhana clutched at Yudhisthira's shoulder more tightly. "Is he...?"

"Stay calm," Yudhisthira said. "He's not human." Out of the corner of his eye, Yudhisthira saw Duryodhana slowly moving his other hand toward his hip, where Yudhisthira knew he was wearing a rather large yet easy-to-throw knife. "DON'T," Yudhisthira said. Duryodhana obediently lowered his hand, and Yudhisthira whispered under his breath, "Careful, we don't know what he is. He could be anything - a rakshasa or a yaksha, or a gandharva if we're really unlucky."

"Oh," said the old man, although it should have been impossible for him to hear Yudhisthira over the roar of the storm around them, "I suppose that you could call me a yaksha. This is my stream. I intend you no harm. Please allow me to help you cross."

Yudhisthira risked another glance over at Duryodhana, who was openly boggling at the creature standing across from them. Yudhisthira supposed that this was also Duryodhana's first time meeting one of the inhuman things that populated Kuru - the ghosts and the monsters and the demons that lurked across the planet's surface, but generally stayed outside the outskirts of the centers of human civilization, such as Hastinapura. Duryodhana had heard of rakshasas and yakshas before - especially before he agreed to go on the first camping trip with Yudhisthira and his papa, since rakshasas and yakshas often made the forest their home. Yudhisthira had seen a rakshasa before, once, when he was five years old. His papa had killed it. For Yudhisthira, that had so far been his one and only encounter with the inhuman things, but nevertheless,

Yudhisthira had been raised in this dangerous forest, and he had been taught well by his father. Rakshasas devoured humans, yakshas sometimes favored and sometimes destroyed humans, and gandharvas lived by their own whims and heaven help any human who got in their way. When one was approached by a rakshasa, the proper response was to run. When one was approached by a yaksha, the proper response was to give it whatever it asked for. And if one was ever approached by a gandharva, one knew that the proper response was to think very slowly and carefully about what sort of mushrooms one might have accidentally consumed over the past twenty-four hours.

"Allow me to help you cross," the yaksha repeated.

"Why?" Duryodhana brashly challenged him, causing Yudhisthira to wince. Of all the foolish--!

"So that you may owe me a favor in the future," the yaksha answered.

"Hmm," Duryodhana pondered, suddenly impressed. "Clever. And if we don't _let _you help us?"

"You will regret that."

"No doubt," Duryodhana muttered.

"Duryodhana..." Yudhisthira leaned in close to his cousin, and lowered his voice to a whisper, even though he knew full well that it would likely do him no good. If the yaksha wanted to hear him, then it would hear him, regardless. Still, whispering seemed to be called for regardless. "I think we should do what he says."

"And why is that?"

"If he really is a yaksha, then we should probably stay on his good side."

"And if he's lying to us? What if he's not a yaksha?"

"Okay," Yudhisthira huffed, starting to get impatient with the way that Duryodhana insisted on being stubborn in even the most dangerous situations, purely out of habit. "Let's think about this. If it were a rakshasa, it would have eaten us by now. If it were a danava, it would definitely have eaten us by now. If it were a gandharva, it would be too vain to allow itself to appear in such a form. And if it were anything but yaksha, why would it lie to us?"

"To get us to trust it--"

"Oh please--"

"I'm sorry, but I'm not too keen on going along with any sort of monster that _wants_me to be in debt to it. Aren't you the least bit concerned about that part of it?"

Honestly, Yudhisthira was quite concerned about the idea of being in debt to a yaksha, but at the moment, he was soaked to the bone and cold and shivering and exhausted and more than ready to do whatever what was necessary to be able to make his way safely back to the warm and dry cave where his father was waiting for him, probably with a good fire going, and food and dry blankets and--

"I cannot stand here forever," the yaksha said. "Please decide. You try my patience."

"All right," Yudhisthira said quickly, raising his dripping face defiantly toward the yaksha. "We accept."

Duryodhana elbowed Yudhisthira and muttered something under his breath, but Yudhisthira pointedly ignored him. Yudhisthira knew that Duryodhana did not like to be spoken for, but too bad. Yudhisthira was at the end of his patience as well.

The yaksha stepped forward, knelt at the edge of the raging stream, and slowly dipped the tip of one of his fingers into the frothing water. What happened next took less than a fraction of a second; the stream crackled, lurched once slushily, and then froze solid.

The rain pounding against the shining surface of the twisted ribbon of ice that now ran through the forest splashed and splattered against Yudhisthira's feet. "Hurry," the yaksha said, straightening up quickly. "It will melt soon."

Yudhisthira stepped forward gingerly, lowering his right foot to the slick, wet surface of the rain-splattered ice. It was no good; there was no way he could maintain his footing on this slippery surface. Abandoning his last shreds of dignity, Yudhisthira lowered himself into a crouch and began slowly crawling across the surface of the ice.

Yudhisthira heard a sound like a strangled cough. He turned his head and saw that Duryodhana, still standing on the edge of the frozen water, had not followed him.

"Come on," Yudhisthira said impatiently, and not just because he was damned if he was going to be _alone _in looking ridiculous as he crawled across the slippery ice.

But Duryodhana was still standing, getting more and soaked by the minute, staring down at the frozen stream with an expression of mingled horror, awe, and disgust on his face. "You have got to be kidding me," he said in a voice that was almost too quiet for Yudhisthira to hear over the constant roar of the rain.

"Duryodhana, please!" The ice was cold and painful beneath Yudhisthira's bare, wet hands.

Duryodhana slowly lowered himself to the edge of the stream, and crawled with Yudhisthira across the ice. But he winced with each movement that he made, as if the ice were burning him every time he touched it.

As he reached the opposite bank of the stream, Yudhisthira shakily stood up on the muddy ground, then reached down and helped Duryodhana up. And the yaksha was standing there, still ragged but dry as a bone, as the rain fell in torrents around them. The yaksha smiled at them both. His old-man's smile still had no teeth. "Thank you," he said.

"How did you do it?" Duryodhana suddenly burst out.

Yudhisthira bit down on his lip and forced himself to say nothing. He wasn't sure what frightened him more, the fact that Duryodhana had said something so rude to an obviously temperamental yaksha, or the fact that Duryodhana sounded so... upset. Yes, that was the word for it. Duryodhana was not one to show either fear or confusion in front of anybody, and yet his trembling voice, which Duryodhana usually kept under such good control, had completely betrayed him.

But the yaksha did not seem affronted by this rudeness. He merely folded his hands in front of him and said, almost gently, "You above all humans should not be afraid. I know that you have touched our secrets before."

Duryodhana's face seemed to drain of color, but he fell silent, saying nothing more. Yudhisthira glanced once from Duryodhana, then to the yaksha's smiling face, then back to Duryodhana, who looked as gray and as ill as he had the first time that Yudhisthira's papa had shown him how to skin a deer. Yudhisthira didn't understand the yaksha's words or why they seemed to frighten Duryodhana so. But Yudhisthira knew one thing, and that was that he did not like seeing his normally strong and self-assured cousin so pale and terrified. "Thank you," Yudhisthira said quickly to the yaksha, as he grabbed Duryodhana's cold and clammy hand and said, "But we'll be going now--"

"Wait. I must tell you the favor that you owe me."

Yudhisthira stopped, since he had no choice but to do so.

"One of you two will be crowned a king soon," the yaksha said.

Yudhisthira felt his breath catch in his throat. He had not expected the yaksha to recognize who he and Duryodhana were. Yaksha did not usually concern themselves with human political affairs.

"I believe that it is your tradition that on the day a king is crowned, a seer will be summoned to tell his fortune?"

Yudhisthira nodded, slowly. This was true.

"On the day of your coronation, allow me to tell your fortune." The yaksha closed his eyes and folded his hands in front of him. "That is the favor that I ask of you."

Yudhisthira was stunned, silent. But Duryodhana said, "Mr. Dhaumya isn't going to like that." Some, but not all, of the color was back in his voice. "He has been our family's priest for decades. If we denied him the honor of participating in my coronation, it would be a terrible insult."

"That is the favor that I ask of you," the yaksha repeated.

"You just did me a favor, and now you're asking me to repay you by letting you do me another favor? I don't like that at all, old man."

"Be not arrogant in the face of what you cannot understand," the yaksha said. His eyes were still closed, but there was a hint of menace in his old man's voice. "You will repay my favor in the way that I have asked, or else unimaginable woes will befall your kingdom, Duryodhana. Much worse woe than even _you_ could have wrought."

Duryodhana, growing angry now, opened his mouth to say something more, and Yudhisthira clutched at his arm, trying in vain to stop him--

But it was too late. The old man, the yaksha, was gone.

* * *

IV.

By mid-afternoon, the rains had stopped, and the clouds had lightened from black to gray, thinned to the point where patches of brilliant blue sky seemed to be hinted at from just beyond where the human eye could see.

Bhisma was there to greet them when they returned, striding forward and embracing Yudhisthira's papa enthusiastically. "So I assume that everything fell completely apart while I was gone?" Yudhisthira's papa joked.

"Oh, of course," Bhisma said, pulling out of his embrace. "Your brother Vidura was watching the news all morning. He was convinced that you were going to be struck by lightning or blown away by a tornado or some other such nonsense..." Bhisma trailed off, when he was Yudhisthira and Duryodhana standing a little ways behind Yudhisthira's papa, looking silent and miserable. Bhisma whispered a query quickly to Yudhisthira's papa, but Yudhisthira's papa chuckled and said, "These two idiots couldn't be bothered to look up at the sky, decided to go out hunting this morning, and tell me that they had a run-in with a yaksha for their troubles."

Duryodhana looked down at his feet and looked very much as if he wished that the ground would open up and swallow him whole, right then and there. Yudhisthira could sympathize. He'd felt that way many times before.

Bhisma was giving both of them a long, hard look, but Yudhisthira's papa laughed again and said, "I'm going to go find Madri---"

"Actually, before that, your Ministers need to see you--"

Yudhisthira's papa's face darkened. "But I just got back," he said, a bit childishly.

"This is... somewhat of an emergency. Your brothers and Dusshasana and Bhima are already there." Bhisma gave Duryodhana and Yudhisthira a pointed look. "You two should be there, too. But they'd really like to have you as well," Bhisma added, turning back to Yudhisthira's papa.

"What is it?" Duryodhana asked quickly, immediately snapping back into business mode. "It's the Panchalan fleet, isn't it?" When Bhisma looked surprised, Duryodhana added briskly, "they were practicing war maneuvers in the outer rimcloud of our system last week, too. Those bastards."

Yudhisthira sighed inwardly. He had just returned to civilization, he was still dressed from head to toe in rain-soaked clothes, and now it looked as though he was going to be immediately thrust into more tiresome and terrible duties of kingship before he could even get a change of clothes and take a shower. Was being a king always going to be like this?

* * *

V.

The meeting was immediately less boring than usual, not only because it was in a war room, of all places, but because not just half but all of Dhritarashtra's ministers were there, as well as Uncle Vidura, Grandpa Bhisma, Dusshasana, Bhima, Yudhisthira's papa, and Duryodhana and Yudhisthira himself. The situation was so grave that neither Bhima nor Duryodhana seemed to remember that they were supposed to be sulking whenever they were stuck in a room together.

"Long-range capabilities!" the Minister of Defense was thundering, jabbing a laser pointer angrily at the grainy image being projected in the center of the room. The projected video looped over and over - light, small blips that were Panchalan subspace cruisers, swooping in close toward the rimcloud surrounding the edge of Kuru's system, until flashes of light bounced across the screen - and then large chunks of the rimcloud vanished into exploding clouds of dust.

"They're trying to provoke us," Vidura said calmly. "That's the only possible explanation."

"What sort of range are we looking at?" Duryodhana asked, brusquely. There was no room for him to sit, so he was standing, pacing tensely back and forth behind some of the seated ministers. His wet hair was still plastered to his face and his damp clothes still clung to his body uncomfortably, but he seemed utterly unaware of his own discomfort. At least Yudhisthira had been given a towel to wrap around his shoulders, but Duryodhana had refused any such comfort.

"Long," the Minister of Defense said, "Although not too long. Those ships would have to be at least as close as Kuru Six before they could fire on the surface of this planet with any accuracy."

"That's too close," Dhritarashtra said. He folded his hands in front of him, a cue to the rest of the room - the king had something to say. Everyone fell silent, but instead of speaking his own thoughts, Dhritarashtra turned his unseeing eyes first toward Dusshasana, then to Bhima. "Well?" he asked.

The two of them looked surprised, but Yudhisthira was not. He understood why Bhima and Dusshasana had been asked to this meeting, and he understood what was expected of them, what they had both been being slowly groomed toward over the last five years.

Bhima spoke first. "If we do nothing to retaliate, they'll only grow more bold next time."

Dusshasana nodded. "They _are _trying to provoke us. If we don't respond, we'll only come off as weak in their eyes."

A few of the ministers who knew Bhima and Dusshasana looked rather surprised to see the two of them agreeing on anything. But Yudhisthira was again not surprised. He did know Bhima and Dusshasana well, and he knew that the two of them had always been more alike than dissimilar, in almost every way that counted, no matter how loathe the two of them might have been to admit it.

"But we can't openly attack them," Yudhisthira said, evenly. "We want to deter them, not to escalate anything."

"A solid retaliation won't escalate anything," Duryodhana said, his hands on his hips. "If we show the Panchalans that we mean business, they'll back off. Let's give our space fleet something to do, for crying out loud, we never let them do _anything. _I'm thinking maybe some weapons tests in Panchala's rimcloud, how does that sound?"

Vidura frowned. "Too provocative. Panchala's rimcloud is closer to the inhabited portion of their system than ours is."

"Maybe we should try negotiating with them first," Yudhisthira suggested.

"No way," Duryodhana replied, leaning over a startled minister to slam his fist angrily down on the table between them, causing the projected video screen to jump and crackle. "I say mobilize the fleet first,_then _invite the Panchalans to talk. You know how Panchalans are - nasty, brutish people. They won't listen to negotiations unless we show them our teeth first."

"Our 'teeth'?" Yudhisthira's papa finally said. He looked amused at Duryodhana's suggestion. "Our space fleet hasn't been mobilized for war maneuvers since I was five years old. And your father and I have been cutting back on the fleet's ridiculous maintenance budget every year since then."

"Father, is this true?!" Duryodhana sounded appalled.

"...Mostly," Dhritarashtra said, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

"We've had no choice," the Minister of Finance said, quickly. "The money needed to be used elsewhere. And by several decades ago it became quite clear that our space-faring war technology is damn near obsolete anyway, so there was little sense in continuing to spend money on its maintenance when most of our ships would be better served by being turned into scrap metal--"

"You foolish old men!" Duryodhana burst out, pacing angrily around the room. "Panchala is within two light-years of us and has been all along and you all thought that it would be a good idea to gut our own space fleet?!"

"Duryodhana," Dhritarashtra said, sternly. "Watch your tongue."

Yudhisthira flickered his gaze around the room, watching the reactions of the people seated around him. Grandpa Bhisma was standing off in a corner by himself, in a shadow, watching, not participating in the meeting at all. He was observing them, Yudhisthira suddenly realized. Observing, and judging. Yudhisthira suddenly felt a nervous fluttering in his stomach. Was he being too hesitant and quiet in the face of this threat? Was Duryodhana being too brash? What was Grandpa Bhisma thinking of them both, right now?

Duryodhana was not finished with his outburst. "Well, how many space-worthy vessels DO we have left? Are our weapons any good at all?"

"Compared to the capabilities of Panchala's ships," Yudhisthira's papa said, "not really."

"And we haven't been developing _anything _better over the last four decades?!"

"Duryodhana, _your father _and I agreed that there were more important things for our scientists to focus on, and at the time, I feared sparking an arms race between ourselves and the Panchalans--"

"YOU feared?!"

"Duryodhana," Dhritarashtra repeated sternly, but Yudhisthira's papa suddenly pushed back his chair and stood up, unfolding himself to his full height and glaring down at Duryodhana with all of the grandeur and hauteur that a king could muster. Yudhisthira swallowed and shrunk a bit farther down in his seat. He had never seen his papa looking like before - like he ruled the world and fully expected anybody who challenged him to bow down beneath his feet. "Yes, I feared," Yudhisthira's papa said. "I signed the last budget cut to the space fleet into law. And I stand by that decision still."

For a moment, a single brief moment, Duryodhana seemed to falter. He was not used to being spoken to in such a way, much less from somebody whom he otherwise greatly respected. But the moment passed, and Duryodhana seemed to summon the full force of his fury, refusing to back down even the most miniscule bit in the face of his uncle's stubborn pride. "And so you allowed the Panchalans to turn the tables on us!" Duryodhana fumed. "And because of YOU, we're reduced to nothing but target practice for the Panchalan fleet--"

"I've had it up to here with your hyperbole, young man. Do NOT insult me by insinuating that I would be so foolish as to render our _fleet _helpless--"

"Oh, forgive me, we're not 'helpless,' we're just 'nothing compared to the capabilities of Panchala's ships'! Those were YOUR words, weren't they?!"

"That's hardly--"

That was when the first drop of blood fell down onto the table.

For Yudhisthira, it was if the world suddenly slowed down to the surreal, sluggish pace of a nightmare. He saw his father pause in the middle of his own sentence, and turn his head, slowly, looking down at the dark table and the darker drop of blood dribbling across it, with a kind of mild surprise registering on his face. He reached up and touched his own face. His fingertips brushed the skin beneath his nose, and came away dark and wet.

The room fell silent. The world fell silent. There was nothing but the flickering of the projected video, flashes of white and green light illuminating Yudhisthira's papa and Duryodhana and the ministers seated around them, in ghastly bursts of sick-color and shadow.

"Uncle Pandu?" Duryodhana asked, in a very small voice.

Across the room, Bhima had pushed back his chair and was charging across the room toward them. "Papa!" he cried out, but to Yudhisthira, this was also slow, so slow, too slow.

Too late.

The once-king of Kuru swooned forward, his mouth slack, his eyes rolling back in his head. Yudhisthira watched his father falling forward, his brain screaming at him to get up and do something, his terror rooting him in place. It was like a nightmare - everything slow, everything relentless, and none of Yudhisthira's limbs would so much as twitch, no matter how desperately he willed them to.

Duryodhana caught Yudhisthira's papa before his head could smash into the table below.

And just like that, something in Yudhisthira finally snapped. He leapt out of his seat, but he was too late - now the world was no longer moving slowly, but rather moving quickly, too quickly, too quickly for Yudhisthira to keep up with. "Uncle Pandu, Uncle Pandu!" Duryodhana cried out, helplessly, utterly baffled as to what to do with the limp man in his arms. Uncle Dhritarashtra and Uncle Vidura were suddenly there, pulling their brother out of Duryodhana's arms. The ministers were in an uproar, pressing around Yudhisthira on all sides. Bhima reached out and grabbed Yudhisthira's shoulder, shaking him, asking him "What's wrong with Papa?! What's wrong with him?!" as if he expected Yudhisthira to have an answer. But Yudhisthira had no answer - his breath was locked in his throat. And then Grandpa Bhisma was there, strong, calm Grandpa Bhisma, pushing both Yudhisthira and Bhima into a corner of the room, away from the ministers and the still-flickering, still-looping video screen, away from the roar of voices and the cries of help, into a quiet and shadowed corner. He bent down and hugged them both in his arms and said, "Don't look."

But Yudhisthira writhed free of Bhisma's arms, stepped away from his grandfather, and he looked.

He saw the crowd gathered on the other side of the room, and through the panicked crowd he heard Uncle Vidura shouting "Back off, back off, give him some room!" Duryodhana was shouting, "Call for help! Hasn't anybody got a comm? What _is wrong with you people?!_" Then Yudhisthira saw a white flash of his father's hand, and it was twitching in a strange, awful way.

Yudhisthira's vision began to grow dark around the edges. He swayed a bit on his feet, then grit his teeth and straightened his legs, refusing to let himself miss this, any of this, no matter how terrible it was.

Then Yudhisthira saw the darkness again, and this time it had a form. It was Yama, it was death, swooping down toward the crowd on the other side of the room. And none of them saw it - him - coming.

Yudhisthira held out his hand toward the shadow. His throat refused to work, but his heart screamed well enough, and then some.

_WAIT!_

The shadow paused and turned toward him. It had a face but no face - eyes but no eyes - and its not-eyes were filled with sadness. _It is his time_, the shadow said.

"Give him some more time," Yudhisthira pleaded, feeling tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. "At least let me say goodbye to him."

_I have already given him time_, the shadow said. _Much time. Much more time that I should have. For your sake._

"Father, please!" Yudhisthira wept, and this time he addressed not the human man dying in the room with him, but the formless shadow that had come to finish the job. For Yudhisthira finally, in that moment, truly understood what he had only been told by priests and read in books up until that point in his life. Yudhisthira was a devakin, and his true father was this shapeless dark thing swallowing the world in front of his eyes. For the shapeless dark thing was Yama, who was death, but was also Dharma, the final and truest justice in the world. Yudhisthira had always been told that he was born of Dharma, but Dharma and Yama were one and the same - and they always had been. In that moment, Yudhisthira finally understood the tremendous gift that his deva-father had given him.

The shadow touched Yudhisthira's shoulder with what might have been a hand, and spoke, saying, _I gave you and your brothers as much time with him as I could. But dharma is dharma, and..._

"Please..."

_No. _

Yama's last word echoed with a terrible sense of finality, of negation. _So this is Dharma,_ Yudhisthira thought. _The thing that says no. The thing that negates. Death and ending._

Yudhisthira's hands fell to his sides. Yama was gone, and across the room, the crowd was growing quiet. The ministers were backing away, slowly. Duryodhana was shaking his head back and forth and back and forth and mumbling "No no no no no." Uncle Vidura was holding a dead man in his arms and rocking back and forth and weeping silently. And blind Uncle Dhritarashtra stroked the dead man's hair and leaned over slowly and kissed his forehead, then reached out and closed his eyelids.

Yudhisthira sank to his knees. He heard Bhima let out a long, slow wail of grief from somewhere behind him.

* * *

VI.

Later, there would be time for words. Later there would such an awful thing as an _autopsy_and a judgment of _probable cause of death_ and everyone would say things like "But he was getting so much better!" and the word _remission _would be repeated over and over and over again on everyone's lips. But none of that mattered, because the results of the autopsy had the words _brain _and _tumor_and _aneurysm _written upon it. And later Grandpa Bhisma would take Yudhisthira and Bhima aside and tell them that _yes_their father's sickness had been healing itself but _no _the tumor in his brain had not shrunk at all and _yes _he and Uncle Vidura and Uncle Dhritarashtra and Kunti-mama and Madri-mama knew about the tumor in the brain, and _no, _they hadn't told Yudhisthira or Bhima or Duryodhana or anybody about it, and the reasons were always different, but the results ended up the same.

Yudhisthira would be hugged and kissed by everyone that he knew, and his eyes would be red and burning but always too dry for tears. And the priests and the doctors would tell him "It happened very quickly" and "He felt no pain," and Yudhisthira would nod his head and agree with them and act comforted.

There would be a funeral.

And on the day of the funeral, the sky would be flat and gray and the world would be washed-out and dim, but there would be no rain, the skies holding back out of respect for what was to come at the end of the funeral. And Yudhisthira would be dressed in white and would take his brother Bhima's hand and would walk, solemnly and with great dignity, through the streets of Hastinapura, following his father's body laid out on a bed of flowers and carried by priests. And there would be millions of people in the streets watching them, and crying and wailing and throwing white ribbons and dyed black roses. And Yudhisthira would not cry because Kunti-mama had told him that he and Bhima were too old to cry, but he would listen to the world crying for him instead.

And in the end they would be in front of the palace, on the shore of the ocean, and Yudhisthira would walk out alone over the vast expanse of sand separating his father's body from the crowd, and there would be a flame clutched in his hand. And Yudhisthira's father would be lying on a boat filled with wood and kindling, and he would look peaceful and serene, as if he were sleeping. And Yudhisthira would look down at him for a long, long moment, halfway convinced that his eyes would flutter open at any minute, that he would yawn and stretch and sit up and scratch his face and look around, confused, and saying something stupid like _What's with the sad face? You look like you're at a funeral!_

Then Yudhisthira would remind himself that the lifelike color in his father's cheeks was nothing more than the work of skilled makeup artists, and that the serene expression on his face and the relaxed pose of his limbs were also calculated, sculpted, artificial, unreal. And then Yudhisthira would bend forward and touch the flame of his torch to the wood on either side of his father's head, and then he would gently push the creaking wooden coffin--

--boat---

down the wet sand and into the ocean, pushing and pushing and wading farther and farther in, feeling the cold salt water soaking into his ridiculous white funeral robes, walking along the bottom of the ocean's surface until the water lapped against his chin, the scent of burning wood and incense and burning flesh in his nostrils, until he could give one final push, and then his father would be gone, carried out into the blue-gray horizon, a vanishing flash of orange fire and black smoke.

And then Yudhisthira would turn around and rise back up out of the ocean, exhausted and dripping and feeling neither better nor worse after performing the duty that was expected of him as the eldest son. And he would look back at the crowd of mourners gathered on the beach, and he would see his brother Bhima, looking out at the ocean as grief twisted his face, and Arjuna, clinging to Bhima's leg and sniffling, his eyes squeezed shut, and Kunti-mama, who was weeping, as she was expected to be, and Madri-mama, who was not weeping, but rather staring into the sky with a sort of stunned expression on her face, while a nanny stood by her side and rocked and tried to hush her twin sons, who were wailing as if they actually understood what had happened to their father and why they had been brought out to the beach that day.

Yudhisthira would think once, briefly, that Madri-mama had been wearing that same stunned, disbelieving expression on her face for the past several days, and that was a bit strange, after all, and a bit worrisome too. But for Yudhisthira, this was a thought that came and then passed quickly, and he did not think about it again. He was too wrapped up in his own grief, in his own exhaustion, to think much of anyone else. They all were, really.

Later, Yudhisthira would have time to regret not noticing what he should have noticed earlier.

* * *

VII.

Duryodhana tossed and turned in his bed, but sleep would not come. He wondered how anybody could sleep, after an entire day spent at a funeral. He wondered how Yudhisthira was doing. He had wanted to see Yudhisthira after the funeral, but the guards and Grandpa Bhisma would not let him. Because Yudhisthira was unclean, because he needed to be isolated, because he needed to be locked away for at least the cycle of one sunrise and one sunset before he could speak to or see anybody again. It was the price that he paid for fulfilling his duty as the eldest son of the deceased. What he had done on the beach that afternoon had been necessary, but had also been a spiritually polluting task.

Duryodhana sighed and sat up in his bed. Ritual impurity had always seemed like a load of gillwash in his personal opinion, but now hardly seemed like the time to challenge it. Duryodhana reached for a glass of water that he kept beside his bed and held it in his hands, squeezing it, feeling it turn into solid, crackling ice beneath his fingertips.

Freeze, and then thaw. Within an instant, the water inside the glass was not only water again, but it was warm water, as well. Then it was frozen again. Freeze, and then thaw. Freeze, and then thaw. It was a pointless exercise, really - Duryodhana had taught himself how to master this skill long ago - but at least it helped focus his energy, relax him, and exhaust him. A few more minutes of this, and he would be able to make himself fall asleep easily.

It was dark in Duryodhana's room, but he did not need the light to see the ice forming and unforming in his hands. He could feel it. And besides, he dared not turn on a light, any light, not so long as he was doing this thing. He knew that it was wrong and he knew that it was forbidden and he knew that it was something that no human being should ever, ever be able to do. And he also knew that his life and his reputation and his career would be ruined beyond salvation if a single other living soul ever found out about this power in his hands. Which is why Duryodhana had been very, very good at keeping it a secret, ever since he had first accidentally frozen his math textbook, over five years ago.

But this was all that he could do, he reminded himself. Just ice. He had tried to perform other miracles before - he had tried to make fire, manipulate shadows, make objects dance in the air. He had heard that the asura power of maya had allowed asuras in the past to do just that. But for Duryodhana, all of his attempts had ended in failure - unless he was trying to make ice. And of course, he couldn't make much of the ice, because he couldn't change much of the world around him, either freezing or thawing. He would never have been able to change something as large and as ferocious as the mountain stream that the yaksha had frozen for him and Yudhisthira, one rainy morning that felt like an eternity ago. But for the first and only time in his life, however, Duryodhana was actually relieved to have failed at something. If he could not make fire or manipulate shadows or make objects dance in the air, then he could _not _really be using maya, of course. Which was good, because only an asura could use maya. Duryodhana could not really use maya, therefore, Duryodhana was not an asura, or part-asura, or anything related to an asura whatsoever. Which was just as well, because Duryodhana was rather relieved to confirm that he was just a human after all.

_If you're just a human, then why can you make ice with your hands?_

Duryodhana banished that thought quickly. He placed his glass of water back on the nightstand beside his bed, then flopped over on his side, struggling to find a comfortable position. _Are you sure that you aren't using maya? Are you sure that you really can't do all those other things? Don't you think that maybe when you did try, you just didn't let yourself try hard enough?_

"Shut up," Duryodhana whispered to himself.

_Are you sure that you didn't hurt Uncle Pandu?_

"Shut up," Duryodhana repeated, squeezing his eyes shut. Uncle Pandu had died of a sudden aneurysm related to the expanding tumor in his brain. Duryodhana had asked and the doctors had told him over and over and over again, that the aneurysm had been primed and ready to burst long before Uncle Pandu had ever walked into that meeting in the war room with him, long before he had started yelling at Uncle Pandu, and long before Uncle Pandu had ever starting yelling at him in return, long before--

Duryodhana felt a very unwelcome tear sliding down his cheek. He sniffled, more out of shame and anger at himself - stupid crybaby! - than at anything else. Yes, he had been angry at Uncle Pandu. At the moment, he remembered being downright furious at Uncle Pandu. And yes, the ice had come when he had lost his temper before - when he had been feeling sad or hurt or angry or nervous, the ice had come, and although he now seemed to have it under control enough so that it no longer threatened him in public, it often burst out of him when he was alone. Duryodhana had frozen his computer and his bedposts and a window in his room before, not intentionally, but in moments when he had been overwhelmed by rage or frustration or just plain cold anger, it didn't matter who or what was the cause.

_"You have touched our secrets before."_

Yes, but now he had the ice under control.

No, he didn't have it under control. And he couldn't be sure that the only thing he could do was ice, either.

Nonsense. He had the ice and nothing more.

_You were so angry at Uncle Pandu. Don't you remember? You were seeing _red_, Duryodhana._

So what? It had been a fight, and not a very nice fight, but Duryodhana was old enough to understand that everybody had fights, even people who loved each other very much. Duryodhana had had fights with his papa and with Grandpa Bhisma and yes, even with Dusshasana before. And yes, he regretted with all his heart that his last moments with Uncle Pandu had been spent practically screaming at him. And yes, if he had known that Uncle Pandu was going to keel over and die in the middle of the meeting then of course Duryodhana would have said things differently, but that was all hindsight, and there was no point in dwelling on the past now.

_You don't know for sure that you're not the one who hurt him. You don't know for sure that you're not the one who killed--_

"Shut up, brain, just shut up!" Duryodhana hissed, pressing his hands over his ears. "Go to sleep and leave me alone!"

But sleep would not come, and his mind, in turmoil, asked Duryodhana the question that it always asked him on sleepless nights like this:

_What _am_ I?!_

* * *

VIII.

It was evening, two days later, when Yudhisthira finally shed his white robes and was allowed out of his private chambers again. He wandered around the palace, which was quiet and mostly deserted at this late hour, hoping to find Kunti-mama or Bhima or Arjuna or somebody to talk to. Somebody who was likely to _not _hug him and kiss him and tell him how sorry they felt, because Yudhisthira had had just about enough of that over the past several days.

But Yudhisthira found Madri-mama first.

Madri-mama was sitting on a balcony, overlooking a garden, when Yudhisthira spotted her. She turned her head and smiled at him and said, "Come here." Her twin sons, Nakula and Sahadeva, were dozing in her lap.

Yudhisthira came to her and knelt beside her. She placed her hand on top of his head and sighed, ruffling his hair and saying, "You're such a good son, Yudhisthira."

"Ah... Thank you."

"Hm." She let her hand fall away from Yudhisthira's head and hang limply at her side. She stared out at the garden, into the dimming darkness of the sunset, and said, in a distant, strange voice, "Yudhisthira..."

"Mother?"

"I need you to do a favor for me."

"Of course." Yudhisthira stood, and Madri-mama handed the sleeping twins to him. He took them both in his thin arms, holding them awkwardly - they were both nearly two years old, both large and heavy, and Yudhisthira marveled that neither of them seemed inclined to wake up.

"Take them for me," Madri-mama said, standing up out of her seat. "Come, sit here. Stay with them for a bit. They need you."

"Mother?" Yudhisthira sat down and shifted the sleeping twins in his lap. One of them alone would have been fine, but together, the two of them were uncomfortably heavy.

"They're sleeping," Madri-mama said, her hand momentarily resting on Yudhisthira's shoulder. "They were... They were crying too much. They wouldn't let Mama go. So Mama had to give them something sweet, so they could be happy, and so that they could be quiet." She dropped her hand from Yudhisthira's shoulder, and stood still for a moment, silent and staring off into space, while Yudhisthira watched her, a small trill of nervousness shivering up his spine.

"Madri-mama...?"

Madri-mama seemed to retreat from her reverie, at least partially. "Yudhisthira..."

"Yes, Mother?"

"Promise me that you'll always be my son, and their brother."

"Of course."

"That's my boy." She bent down and kissed the top of his head. "Do you know that song that your father used to sing? The one about the ducklings and the fox?"

"Yes..."

"Sing it for them. Please. Your father used to hold them like that and sing to them. They loved it so much."

"All right... All right, Mother."

Against his better judgment, Yudhisthira held his sleeping baby brothers in his arms, and sang to them softly, the song about the ducklings and the fox, the same one that his father had used to sing to him. The song was long, but Yudhisthira sang every verse. Halfway through he noticed that Madri-mama had gone, but was not as worried as he could have been. Madri-mama had seemed sad, of course, but that was not so unusual, since everybody was allowed to be sad right now.

Maybe she just wanted a little bit of time away from her sons, Yudhisthira thought, just a few moments of private mourning, just for herself...

Yudhisthira finished his song, and suddenly realized that although he had not been singing particularly quietly, the twins had not yet woken up.

Yudhisthira tried to jiggle them both gently. Sahadeva's head lolled, and he made a small sound in the back of his throat, but his eyes did not open. Nakula, however, writhed and moaned, "Mama..."

And then Yudhisthira finally began to feel scared. He stood up quickly, holding the heavy twins in his trembling arms, and rushed off in search of the nearest comm. He had to call somebody, the guards, a doctor, Madri-mama - he should probably call Madri-mama first - no, he should _go to_Madri-mama, right away, without even stopping to get help--

But by then, of course, it was already too late.

* * *

IX.

"Nana!"

Daya, or as she was known to Arjuna, Nana, was startled enough to nearly spill her chocolate all over herself. "Arjuna?" She had put him to bed nearly an hour ago, yet there he was, standing in his pajamas in the middle of her room, his hair mussed and his eyes wild. His glasses were nowhere in sight - he must have leapt out of bed without even bothering to put them on. Daya wondered how much, or how little, of the world around his he could see with his wild, half-blind eyes. "Did you have a bad dream?" Daya asked.

"No, Nana, I have to go see Madri-mama!"

"Arjuna, you need to go back to sleep--"

"I have to go see Madri-mama _now_!"

"Do you want some hot milk?" Daya set aside her cup of chocolate, stood up, and walked toward the young prince, her mind instantly strategizing ways she could get him to calm down and go back to bed. The poor thing had had a rough several days, and she could hardly blame him for being upset, but she knew that right now sleep was what he needed most.

"No, Nana!" Arjuna stomped his foot angrily. "Take me to Madri-mama NOW!"

"Arjuna--"

But Arjuna was already sucking in his breath, preparing to _really _start throwing a tantrum. And he did. "_I wanna see Madri-mama NOW!_" he howled, accompanied by a crack of thunder somewhere high above the palace.

Daya froze. It was not like Arjuna to start screaming in such a way, either at her or at anybody. He was clearly hysterical, and Daya could tell by looking at him that he would not calm down until--

"All right, baby," Daya said, sweeping up the little boy in her arms, "We'll go see Madri-mama, just for a few minutes."

"Thank you, Nana," Arjuna sniffled, once again as polite and well-mannered as usual. Daya set him back down on the ground, took his hand, and began to lead him through the hushed, quiet, sleeping palace. But there was an urgency in Arjuna's tiny strides that would not be satisfied with Daya's pace, and soon Arjuna was the one pulling Daya along.

The two of them were approaching the guards positioned outside what Daya knew were Queen Madri's private rooms, when Arjuna suddenly let go of Daya's hand and broke into a run.

"Arjuna, wait--!"

The guards stepped in front of him, blocking his path. "Whoa there," one said with a chuckle, and the other one said, "Queen Madri is asleep and has asked not to be disturbed."

But Arjuna would not be deterred. "_I wanna see Madri-mama_!" He was small and short and extremely unintimidating with his pajamas and his sleep-mussed hair. But his eyes flashed with menace, thunder rumbled overhead, and, for a moment, Daya thought she saw the devakin marking visible on the back of Arjuna's neck writhing and wriggling across his skin--

But surely that was just her imagination.

"Gu--!" One of the guards said, a sound which was not a word. He sounded frightened. He hesitated for a moment, as did his partner, both of them surprised by what they had seen in the young boy's eyes; and Arjuna took advantage of that moment to leap around the feet of the guards and dash through the doors behind them - doors which, of course, should have been locked, and indeed the guards could have sworn had been locked a few moments ago--

"Arjuna!" Daya called out again, but by then, it was too late.

From somewhere behind those doors, Arjuna started shouting frantically, "Wake _up, wake up, wake up, please wake up!_"

The two guards and Daya burst through the doors at the same time. They saw Arjuna, standing beside the queen's bed, clutching at her limp arm and shaking her frantically, still shouting "_Wake up, wake up!_" through his tears. But the queen would not wake up. She sprawled across her bed, limp and unmoving, her wide eyes glazed over and empty, staring up at the ceiling above her. On a table beside her bed sat a dark lamp, a lit candle, a folded up letter, and four empty bottles of pills.

* * *

X.

There was another funeral.

There were even more people at the funeral this time, an even more swollen crowd on the beach. They were royalty from Madra, where once upon a time, Madri-mama had once been a princess. Yudhisthira recognized their faces and their names, even if he had never met them before. Chief among them was Shalya, the king of Madra, who was Madri-mama's older brother, and Yudhisthira's uncle. Shalya and his entourage had arrived at Hastinapura two days before the funeral, and Shalya had refused to speak a word to Yudhisthira since then. He had marched behind Yudhisthira during the funeral procession, and Yudhisthira had felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickling as Uncle Shalya had glared at him. He could still feel Uncle Shalya glaring at him from across the distance of sand and sea as he waded out with Madri-mama's burning funeral pyre into the ocean. When it was finally time for Yudhisthira to let Madri-mama go and turn around and wade back to the shore, he did so without being able to meet Uncle Shalya's eyes.

The twins were not there for their mother's funeral. They were both being watched over by a nanny. They had cried for their mother at first, but Kunti had explained to them, as best she could, that their mother was gone and not coming back. Eventually they stopped crying, and, rather eerily, had eventually stopped asking for "Mama" as well, even though it had only been a few days since their mother's death. The doctors and psychologists who met the twins told Yudhisthira that they would likely grow up happy and healthy and remembering none of this. Yudhisthira wanted to believe that. He wanted to believe that very much.

Yudhisthira was halfway across the sandy beach, walking slowly back from the waves behind him and into the crowd in front of him, when a shadow suddenly fell across his path. He looked up and into Uncle Shalya's eyes for the first time. Shalya drew back his hand slapped Yudhisthira across the cheek. Hard.

The crowd gasped, but nobody moved to interfere. Nobody dared to.

"You," Shalya hissed.

"Yes," Yudhisthira said, slowly reaching up to touch his reddened, tender cheek. "Me."

"She needed you and you turned your back on her." He turned away from Yudhisthira and addressed the crowd angrily, sweeping his arms in a gesture that accused all of them in turn. "_You all turned your back on her_!"

Yudhisthira stood in the stand and held his cheek while Shalya turned and whirled away from him, stalking back across the sand.

* * *

To be continued. 


	5. Interlude: Yuyutsu

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti and Steelehearts for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: YUYUTSU

* * *

Yuyutsu closed his eyes, but he still saw an endless expanse of white and red and black, flowers falling in countless numbers through the air, choking the streets, landing in his mother's hair and on the white robes of the mourning princes, trampled beneath the grief-heavy feet of royalty and peasant alike, every bit as sad and dead themselves as the fallen king that they were meant to mourn.

"Don't," Yuyutsu's mother said, placing her hand on his shoulder.

Yuyutsu opened his eyes, and forced himself to look. Yuyutsu and his mother had both been given good seats at the front of the crowd, close to the palace grounds and toward the end of the funeral procession. They would not be allowed to watch the lighting of the funeral pyre on the beach below the cliff upon which the king's palace sat; but that was all right by Yuyutsu. He had no particular desire to see or to smell a dead man burning.

Yuyutsu watched the procession on the street below him through a haze of floating flowers. He saw the dead king, sleeping on his bed of kindling and dried blossoms. He saw the eldest son of the former king, Yudhisthira, his face pinched and as pale white as his robes, following his father toward the beach. And behind Yudhisthira, Yuyutsu saw - and this caused him to do a double-take - the elderly current king, Dhritarashtra, walking with his head held high and his useless eyes seeing nothing. His youngest brother, Vidura, also robed in resplendent, shining white, led the king gently, with his hand on the king's shoulder. But the king walked as if he did not need guidance, tall and strong and sure, as if he were not suffering from the diseased veins and arthritic joints that Yuyutsu knew he was suffering from.

Yuyutsu was surprised to see the king walking on the street. He felt a sudden surge of pride, watching the old man down below walking in proud defiance of the death and decay which had already claimed his brother, and was due to come for him soon.

"Look, Yuyutsu," his mother said, squeezing his hand. "Look at your father."

Yuyutsu looked at the old king, closed his eyes, and still saw his father walking among the flowers, white skin and white hair and white robes set against falling scarlet blossoms.

* * *

II.

Yuyutsu was a prince but not a prince. He was a secret, but a secret that everybody knew about. It was kind of nice, though, being a paradox. When he wanted a family, he had a father and one hundred and one siblings waiting in the wings. When he wanted to be alone, he was alone. He had been born into a servant class and also born into the noble class. He had grown up learning how to serve fine meals and wash royal robes and clean silver and gold fixtures; his father had also assigned him a tutor to teach him about politics and economics and how to behave when speaking publicly. Not that Yuyutsu would ever be allowed to speak publicly on behalf of the royal family, of course.

The night after the funeral, the palace gardens were strung with lights and filled with the hushed, subdued conversations of milling mourners. Yuyutsu floated among the wake, watching his half-brothers whispering to each other and passing around glasses of something or other, getting more and more drunk as the night wore on. Insects chirped in the shadows and night-birds hooted in the trees, but nobody paid them any mind.

Prince Duryodhana found Yuyutsu first.

"Oh," Duryodhana said, when he spotted Yuyutsu, "this way."

Duryodhana knew without having to ask why Yuyutsu had come to the palace that night. Duryodhana understood these things about Yuyutsu, the way that he understood all of his brothers. It was a nice skill to have, Yuyutsu thought. It made it almost seem as if Duryodhana genuinely cared about his brothers.

Yuyutsu followed him. Duryodhana, unlike the others, did not appear even the slightest bit tipsy. He had a fluted glass filled with dark liquid in his hand, but carried it as if he were constantly forgetting that it was even there. Yuyutsu suspected that he hadn't taken a sip from his glass all night.

Yuyutsu liked Duryodhana. Duryodhana treated Yuyutsu as if he really were one of Duryodhana's younger brothers. Which was to say, Duryodhana largely treated Yuyutsu like a servant. But that was all right. Duryodhana would do anything for any of his brothers, including Yuyutsu. It seemed only natural that he held an unspoken expectation that he be worshiped, adored, and loyally served in return. Yuyutsu had never seen any of Duryodhana's brothers fail to live up to that expectation - himself included.

It wasn't a bad deal, having a crown prince looking out for your interests.

Yuyutsu quickened his step until he was walking beside the prince, and asked, "How is Father doing?"

"As well as can be expected," Duryodhana said, with a bitter laugh. He walked beside Yuyutsu with an easy affability, as if they were equals. Brothers. Well, they shared the same father, after all. For tonight, at least, the fact that Duryodhana was a crown prince but Yuyutsu was the son of a serving maid made no difference.

Yuyutsu's father was sitting on a stone bench beside a moonlit reflecting pool, old and hunched over and white even in the night's darkness, cupping a sweetroll that he had not touched in his withering hands, rested in his lap. Uncle Vidura was sitting beside him, his head on his older brother's shoulder. Yuyutsu had never seen Uncle Vidura with graying hair before, but tonight, beneath the white moonlight, Yuyutsu could see streaks of silver in his youngest uncle's hair.

Duryodhana said nothing as they approached, but old King Dhritarashtra still turned his unseeing eyes toward them both and said, "Ah, Yuyutsu."

"Father..."

Duryodhana gave him a little push in the small of his back - "Go," he whispered - and then Duryodhana was gone. Yuyutsu slowly approached his father, and knelt in front of him, his hands on his father's knees. Out of respect for Yuyutsu, Vidura lifted his head from his brother's shoulder, but other than that, did not move.

"Look at you," the king said, his hand resting on top of Yuyutsu's head. "Already grown up."

Yuyutsu shook his head, then said, "I was at the funeral today."

"I know."

Yuyutsu was not surprised. His father may not have been able to see with his eyes, but he had a sharp awareness of the world around him nevertheless. "Father, I'm sorry," Yuyutsu finally said, because it was what he had come to say, as inadequate and pointless as the words were.

"Ah," the king sighed. "Me too. Me too."

The two of them were still for a moment, sharing their grief. Yuyutsu felt his father's hand on the crown of his head, heavy with both love and sadness and regret. Regret for the death of his brother, but regret for the life of his not-son as well. Yuyutsu always felt his father's regret when his father touched him. Love, and regret, and guilt for feeling regret.

Yuyutsu knew that he had been a mistake. He was neither a naive nor a stupid man, and he had made peace with that fact long ago. He also knew that his father was his father, period, end of story. The king had never tried to deny nor to hide Yuyutsu and his mother. The two of them resided in the finest servant's quarters in the palace, Yuyutsu's mother was always assigned the easiest possible jobs, and Yuyutsu himself had always been discreetly groomed to at least be more than a mere servant, if not a prince himself.

However, Yuyutsu had never, ever been in the same room at the same time as Queen Gandhari. He assumed that he would never be allowed to be.

A foot fell on the soft grass behind them. Yuyutsu turned his head and saw Duryodhana again, this time with another one of his bothers - Durmukha, wasn't it? Durmukha stepped forward, and Yuyutsu stood up and stepped away from his father. Durmukha knelt at his father's side, and the old king also placed a hand on his other son's head, and they whispered quiet words of grief to each other. Duryodhana took Yuyutsu's arm and pulled him away.

Yuyutsu allowed himself to be pulled. He understood now that Duryodhana must have been doing this all night - bringing each and every one of his brothers for their turn to comfort their father in his grief. And at the end of the night, when each and every one of them had come and gone, Duryodhana alone would have his father all to himself, and he would hug his shoulders and kiss his cheek, the way that none of his other brothers had dared to do.

"Thank you for coming," Duryodhana said, even as he pulled Yuyutsu along. "I mean it. Really. He needs... He needs us, tonight."

"Of course."

The two of them paused on the edge of a clearing in which more mourners milled among the lights on strings and white tables covered in sweets and drinks. Duryodhana left without saying a word, off to hunt for more of his brothers. He was at least efficient, organizing the mourning the way that he was. But that was just Duryodhana being in his element - in charge, in control, telling other people what to do and where to go.

Yuyutsu thought that he must have been hurting pretty badly inside.

Yuyutsu walked through the gardens, avoiding the other mourners - none of them seemed inclined to try to speak with him anyway. He heard a sniffle, looked down, and saw the massive figure of Prince Bhima sitting beneath a tree, with Prince Arjuna curled in his lap and crying. Yuyutsu looked away from them quickly. He wiped his own eyes and reflected ruefully that he had always been helpless in the face of sympathy tears.

Yuyutsu decided that he had had enough sorrow for one night. He left the garden, and returned to the palace, to his quarters, where his mother was already asleep in her bed. Yuyutsu bent over her and kissed her forehead, before he retired to take a shower.

* * *

III.

Yuyutsu lay in bed and stared at the ceiling above him. He could not sleep. He kept thinking about the future, about tomorrow. Tomorrow, everything would be back to normal. Tomorrow Yuyutsu and his mother would be serving breakfast to princes, bussing plates and silverware, polishing railings throughout the palace. And in the evening, Yuyutsu's tutor would come and quiz him on ancient Kuru history.

Yuyutsu closed his eyes and thought farther than tomorrow.

Would he live as a servant for the rest of his life?

Could he be a prince? Would he be accepted as a prince?

Could he be a minister or a judge or an aide or a publicist for the royal family?

In theory, Yuyutsu could be any of these things. In theory, Yuyutsu's father would support him and protect him regardless of which path he chose for himself. Yuyutsu's father had told him as much, years ago.

And in reality, Yuyutsu knew that he could be none of these things. Not without scandal, not without uproar. The tutor had prepared him well, but he had not had the training or the education of a real prince. He would never go to a university to earn the papers needed for a real career. And he would never have the _blood _or the _breeding _to really become one of _them_, not truly.

So why the tutor? Why the choices dangled in front of him, tantalizingly? Why the father who loved him and supported him? Yuyutsu thought that it would be so much easier if he could just _be _the bastard child that nobody wanted, the dirty little secret, loathed and hidden and unloved. That would be the easier story, that would be the easier role. None of this strange limbo between worlds. None of these promises of a future that likely would never be. None of this pervasive sense that he had a father and one hundred brothers when he truly, honestly did not.

Yuyutsu squeezed a wad of his own bedsheets in his hands, and felt the ice flowing out of his palms and over the soft fabric of his covers, hardening them, freezing them. He huddled beneath his crackling covers of ice and his mind, in turmoil, asked Yuyutsu the question that it always asked him on sleepless nights like this:

_What _am_ I?!_

* * *

To be continued. 


	6. Chapter 03: The Gift

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti beta-ing this chapter! Please note that this chapter will likely be revised later; but I wanted to break the far-too-long stretch between new chapters, so here's a temporary upload. Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER THREE: THE GIFT

* * *

It was over even before Arjuna had a chance to defend himself. He thrust toward his opponent's chest, but his opponent was too fast for him; a parry and a twist, and Arjuna suddenly had a sword at his throat and his feet sliding out from underneath him. The humiliation was completed and perfected when he fell, ungracefully, landing on his behind.

"I told you not to leave me such a wide opening," Grandpa Bhisma said, a bit impatiently, tossing aside his practice blade and pulling back his helmet. "And I've been telling you all morning."

"Yes, sir." Arjuna's cheeks were flushed with shame and frustration. It didn't help that the clear faceplate of his helmet hid nothing from his snickering cousins who were watching him from a few feet away.

Durmada and Vikata, both Arjuna's seniors by over a decade, were among the most talented swordsmen in the royal family (not counting Duryodhana and Bhima, against whom there was simply no comparison). When Arjuna had turned eight years old, Durmada and Vikata had been assigned to teach him how to use a sword, for Grandpa Bhisma himself was finally growing too old and too tired to handle another young pupil. Now, five years later, Arjuna was still every bit as clumsy and unskilled with a sword as he had been on his very first day of lessons. Durmada and Vikata had given up on him long ago, Bhima was always too busy running the kingdom's defenses to tutor his younger brother in a hobby as silly and pointless as swordplay anyway, and now even Grandpa Bhisma - who had finally agreed to teach Arjuna, despite his stiffening joints and encroaching arthritis - couldn't do anything to save Arjuna from his own lack of talent.

It didn't help things that Durmada and Vikata liked to show up and watch Arjuna's practice lessons with Grandpa Bhisma, either. In theory, they were there to help out Grandpa Bhisma if he ever asked for help. In reality, they were there to amuse themselves.

Arjuna stood up shakily, pushing back his helmet and wiping sweat from his brow with his hand. At least he didn't have his glasses to worry about anymore. Now that he was thirteen years old and an adult, his mother had finally allowed him to wear soft lenses over his eyes. But Arjuna still needed glasses to read with, and in reality, his eyesight without his glasses or lenses was so abysmal that Nakula often joked that Arjuna should be declared legally blind. Or at least, that was the joke. Arjuna suspected that his mother would not let him take an eye exam for fear that Nakula's little joke would be proven true.

Arjuna lowered his helmet again, and assumed a ready stance. "Okay. Go."

Grandpa Bhisma had his sword pointed at Arjuna's chest before Arjuna had barely moved.

Durmada snickered, but Bhisma turned toward him angrily and said, "If you have nothing of value to contribute, Durmada, I suggest that you and your brother _leave _now."

"We're going," Vikata said, pulling Durmada by the arm. "No point in watching the Pumpkin make a fool of himself anymore, anyway."

They left, And Grandpa Bhisma pulled off his helmet and said to Arjuna, "Don't listen to them."

"Kind of hard not to."

"Arjuna--"

Arjuna had assumed his ready stance again. "Come on. One more time!"

Grandpa Bhisma looked at him for a long moment. But finally, instead of putting back on his helmet, Grandpa Bhisma walked over to a nearby bench and set down his helmet, then began removing his elbow protection. "No, I think that you've had enough for today."

"But Grandpa Bhisma--!"

"In fact," Bhisma said, sternly, "I think you've had enough, period."

Arjuna tore off his helmet, angrily. "Are you telling me to give up?!"

"Yes." Grandpa Bhisma turned his head and looked Arjuna squarely in the eye. "You haven't managed to do a _single move right _since the day that you began. At this point, I think it would be a far better idea for you to give up this pointless hobby - and it is a pointless hobby, dear, no matter what your brother Bhima or your cousin Duryodhana might say - and focus your energies on something that you can actually be good at."

"And what would that be?" Arjuna asked, not spitefully, as he had intended to ask it, but rather mournfully, the way that it had just slipped out of his mouth.

As far as Arjuna was concerned, there was nothing else that he was good at. He was competent with his lessons but just barely that; reading anything gave him headaches, anyway. He blamed his poor eyesight. It was easier than admitting that reading about economics confused him and reading about history frightened him in a way that he couldn't quite explain in front of Grandpa Bhisma. He was short and thin and moved in a particularly clumsy way; he was not charismatic, as had been made gently clear to him by his oldest brother's advisors, and likely not cut out for handling any sort of job that required frequent public appearances. He had neither the cleverness nor the subtlety nor the ability to be manipulative that a behind-the-scenes career required. He was a prince without a future. He was not cut out to be a minister or an advisor or even just a pretty-looking figurehead.

Arjuna had turned thirteen years old a few short months earlier. On the day of his thirteenth birthday, Mr. Dhaumya, the officially appointed priest of the royal family, had shared with the family a message that he had received when Indra had appeared to him in a vision: that Indra's son, Arjuna, was to become the greatest warrior that Kuru had ever known.

Upon hearing this, Arjuna had never wanted so badly to crawl back into his bed and never, ever come out again for the rest of his life.

Indra, the king of the devas. Indra, the lord of war. Indra, the rainstorm. Indra, Arjuna's deva-father, whom he had never seen or spoken to but had only tasted in the electric air beneath a breaking thunderhead. Indra, who rode around the skies in his chariot of lightning and had understandably lost touch with the modern world, in which wars were fought and won by fleets of metal ships in space, remote-controlled missiles and armored tanks, even hand-held laser weapons that could burn a hole through a man's chest when fired from half a mile away.

There was no need for Kuru to have a great warrior in a time of peace. Panchala's military hadn't dared to stir since the incident seven years previously. There was no way that Arjuna could be a great warrior, anyway - he could barely hold a sword upright in his own two clumsy hands. And there was no way that a sword would be any use against an orbital tank and its long-range microwave lasers, anyway.

Great warriors knew how to program said orbital lasers, or knew how to aim and fire said remote-controlled missiles. Arjuna could barely get his own personal computer to turn on or off, let alone do things like open up word-processing documents or data spreadsheets like it was supposed to do. He always had to ask his little brother Nakula to help him.

Obviously hopeless with handling modern technology, Arjuna had at least clung to the hope, however slim, that he might still, someday, somehow, figure out how to do something as admittedly useless, yes, but at least as _impressive _and as _respectable_ as using a sword. His hopes had briefly gone up when, after his thirteenth birthday, Grandpa Bhisma had agreed to become his sword teacher.

Arjuna realized now that he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up. He probably also shouldn't have agreed to let someone as famously, brutally honest as Grandpa Bhisma become his sword teacher.

Grandpa Bhisma, who had had a lifetime's worth of experience telling his young charges things that they did not want to hear, said, as gently as he could manage, "Arjuna, I'm sure that you--"

"Yeah, whatever," Arjuna suddenly said, cutting Grandpa Bhisma off before he could say something _really _sympathetic. Arjuna didn't want to hear it; at the moment, all he wanted was to be alone. So Arjuna turned away from Grandpa Bhisma, quickly pulled off his helmet and protection, and then, without waiting to be dismissed, trudged gloomily into the locker room adjacent to the gymnasium where he and Grandpa Bhisma had been practicing.

Arjuna showered and changed his clothes, alone. Wherever Grandpa Bhisma had gone or not gone, he had not followed Arjuna into the locker room.

* * *

II.

"You didn't see me," Duryodhana said quickly, sitting down beside Arjuna beneath the shade of the ancient tree pushing out the garden walls behind them, "and I was never here, got it?"

Arjuna looked up from his math homework and sighed. He had gone outside after his practice session with Grandpa Bhisma in order to relax and clear his head, but the sunshine and the hot air had made his head hurt, and he had taken refuge beneath the coolest and shadiest tree he found. He had not expected Duryodhana to appear out of nowhere, unannounced, and suddenly sit down beside Arjuna. Duryodhana was glancing around the gardens furtively, as if hoping to spot his oncoming bodyguards before they spotted him.

"And you don't see me doing this," Duryodhana added, pulling a smokeroll out of the inside pocket of his fine coat and lighting it with a gold-plated lighter.

"Where are you _supposed _to be right now?" Arjuna asked, out of curiosity.

"Meeting with the Minister of Education. I told him I needed to use the restroom." Duryodhana inhaled from his smokeroll and then glanced at his watch. "I'll give myself three minutes. You watch out for the darksuits, okay?"

"Okay," Arjuna said, reluctantly setting aside his homework.

Duryodhana must have noticed that something was wrong. Arjuna would not normally be reluctant to set aside his math homework. "Bad day?" he asked.

"Kind of."

"What?"

"Grandpa Bhisma said that he wouldn't teach me the sword anymore."

Duryodhana exhaled a puff of smoke. "That's terrible," he said. He made no attempt to feign surprise, but he was not unsympathetic, either.

This was why Arjuna liked talking to Duryodhana. Duryodhana understood things. Duryodhana somehow always knew the right thing to say to make Arjuna feel better, even if the right thing to say wasn't always a nice thing to say. Arjuna's own brothers were different. Yudhisthira was always too busy to say anything, or too concerned with not hurting Arjuna's feelings to say the honest thing, even though Yudhisthira could not lie and always ended up saying the honest thing anyway, but doing so in a somehow patently miserable way. Bhima was honest, like Duryodhana, but he also had high expectations for Arjuna, which was sometimes worse than having no expectations at all, like Grandpa Bhisma did.

"So the sword just isn't your thing," Duryodhana said with a shrug.

"I guess not."

"But who cares, anyway? It's a completely useless hobby. I mean, unless the crazy old king of Panchala ever challenges me to a duel, I'm probably never going to use my own sword for anything other than a wall decoration."

"But, see..." Arjuna fidgeted with his hands, a habit that he had unwittingly picked up from his oldest brother. "I think I'm _supposed _to be good with the sword. The gods said so. Um."

"What, that crazy prophecy thing?" Duryodhana waved his hand dismissively.

"I have a devaweapon. The priests said so."

"So maybe," Duryodhana said, holding up a finger, "your devaweapon isn't a sword. And that's why you can't handle a sword. Because you weren't meant to."

Arjuna wrinkled his brow. "But what else could it _be_?" His deva-father had said that he was to be a Great Warrior. All of the Great Warriors of lore used swords. There was just no other weapon that a hero or a king could respectably wield.

"An automatic rifle would be nice," Duryodhana said.

"But the gods don't give people enchanted automatic rifles as devaweapon. They give them enchanted _swords._"

"Maybe they've given you an enchanted orbital laser-firing satellite."

"I would probably just program it to blow itself up," Arjuna said, morosely.

Duryodhana looked at him for a moment, then clapped one of his hands on Arjuna's shoulders and said, "Why don't you talk to Durmukha? He's got that antique crossbow that he's pretty good with. I mean, talk about _archaic _and _useless_, but you know, whatever floats your boat."

"A crossbow?!" Arjuna was horrified at the thought. "Aren't they, like..."

"Completely useless in a war scenario? Yes. But Durmukha tells me that they're quite handy to go hunting with."

Arjuna paled. The very thought of hunting an innocent animal for sport made him sick to his stomach. Sure, he knew that his human father and his older brothers and even Duryodhana were quite into that particular hobby, but Arjuna himself could never bring himself to kill anything as graceful and beautiful as a deer or a bird or--

"Gotta go," Duryodhana said suddenly, after a panicked glance at his watch. He dropped and ground his smokeroll beneath the sole of his shoes and said, "You know, just because some old priest says you have to be a great warrior or something, doesn't mean that you _have _to be. I don't know if you missed the memo, or what, but you and me, we're _royalty_, Arjuna, and we can be whatever the hell we want to be."

Then Duryodhana left, vanishing around the corner of a wall of hedges as quickly as he had appeared, and Arjuna thought to himself, _But maybe I _want_ to be a great warrior, because I know that it's the only thing that I can be. Because even the gods themselves - even my deva-father - have pretty much said that it's the only thing that I can be. Right?_

Arjuna stood up, brushing grass and dirt off his legs, leaving his math homework sitting in a pile at the roots of the tree behind him. He squinted off into the distance, as far as his miserable eyes could see, and realized with a sinking heart that less than two steps in front of him was about as far as his miserable eyes could see.

A crossbow - or any type of bow - any type of projectile weapon at all - would probably be a bad idea, then.

Arjuna wanted to go back indoors. The sunshine always made his head ache and his body feel slightly weak and nauseous. _What horrible weather_, Arjuna thought gloomily, as he trudged back across the palace gardens.

* * *

III.

Unfortunately, Arjuna found the hallway between where he was standing and his private quarters blocked by a half dozen madly scurrying, scuttling metal contraptions with clicking metal legs and more-than-slightly-menacing metal pincers.

"Catch them catch them catch them!" Nakula shouted furiously, pushing Arjuna aside in order to dive to the floor and pounce on one of the contraptions. Somehow Nakula managed to close his grip around one of the metal things while at the same time holding it at an angle so that the furious little robot couldn't quite manage to pinch his hands with its pincers. Nakula managed to twist himself and jump back into a standing position before the other robots could turn on him, then completed the move by leaping up onto a pedestal which, a moment before, had been supporting an imported ceramic vase from Madra. The vase went tumbling to the ground, smashing into a dozen pieces; this at least momentarily distracted the robots on the ground, giving Arjuna time to clumsily step away from one of the robots which had looked just about ready to sink its pincers into his ankle.

"Don't just stand there!" Nakula fumed from his perch on the previous vase-stand. Both of his hands were occupied with the madly flailing robot in his grip, rotating it this way and that as Nakula's fingers fumbled for its control switch. But Nakula wasn't even watching what his own hands were doing; his attention was fixed squarely on Arjuna. "Either catch one or get out of here! They have a taste for human flesh now!"

Arjuna opened his mouth to ask a question about that, but then got his answer when Sahadeva strode up behind him, calmly, and bent down, scooping up one of the crab-robots with one hand and pressing the control switch on its undercarriage before the robot even seemed to realize what had happened to it. Sahadeva tossed the suddenly-stilled robot over his shoulder, dismissively, and bent to pick up another one with the same hand. Sahadeva's other hand was wrapped in a bloody bandage.

"It's easy," Sahadeva said, holding out the flailing robot toward Arjuna. The robot's clicking legs and slightly-more-loudly clicking pincers veered dangerously close to Arjuna's nose. "Just grab them between their legs, and they can't pinch you. Then push this switch, and you're done." Sahadeva tossed the dead robot over his shoulder again, while at the same time bending down to pick up another one that was busily trying to claw its way through Sahadeva's thick boots. Arjuna figured that Sahadeva did not usually wear such thick outdoor boots when walking around indoors.

Arjuna bent down and tried to pick one of the robot crabs up, but as usual, his depth perception seemed to fail him, and when the robot's pinchers lunged toward the soft flesh between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, he quickly drew his hand back. Sahadeva snatched up the robot instead, with a calm smile on his face. "You have to be careful," Sahadeva said, holding his bloody hand out toward Arjuna. "See what happens when you're not careful?"

Arjuna swallowed, nervously.

"They wouldn't have gone berserk like this if YOU hadn't bled all over them!" Nakula shouted, jumping back and forth between the floor and his perch on the pedestal, scooping up robots in his hands and defying certain death from a metal pincer through his wrists at each moment.

Sahadeva bent over and grasped the last robot, snapping its control switch and tossing it to the ground in one expert motion. "Come on," he said. "I would like very much to find the rest of my finger. This should be interesting. I've never had to have a part of my body sewn back on before. Also... I think I'm going to faint."

"Don't," Nakula said sternly, kicking aside a switched-off robot. "We have to clean all of this up before Grandpa Bhisma or somebody sees--"

"_What in the hells are you doing?!_" Arjuna finally found the voice to ask.

Nakula blinked at him, as if suddenly remembering that Arjuna were there. Nakula and his identical twin Sahadeva both had striking golden eyes, and red-gold skin, and red-gold hair the color of the setting sun. They would have stood apart from Arjuna and the rest of his darker-skinned relatives easily, even without the added fact that they were, both of them, painfully and excruciatingly beautiful to look at. It didn't matter that Nakula was often too absorbed in himself to give anyone the time of day or that Sahadeva was, well, a little weird to talk to in person. Nakula and Sahadeva were the two princes who were the most frequently stalked by paparazzi photographers, the most often breathlessly gossiped about in tabloids, the most often subjects of long and elaborate articles in magazines sold to teenage girls. Or sold to older women, for that matter. Arjuna had even heard rumors that _certain people_, whoever certain people were supposed to be, sometimes said or thought or insinuated that Nakula and Sahadeva were even more handsome to look at than Duryodhana was. The fact that Duryodhana was over fifteen years older than the twins did not seem to help his case much.

"We're experimenting," Nakula said, defensively, in answer to Arjuna's question. "I designed them," Nakula went on, pointing proudly to the robots scattered around his feet, dropping his defensive tone in exchange for a transparent sense of pride. "They were supposed to run off a wireless connection to a central computing unit in that one," Nakula said, pointing at a robot that to Arjuna looked no different from any of the others. "But when Sahadeva opened up its casing to adjust its wiring, he cut his finger on the edge of the casing and--"

"--And then I bled a bit all over the poor thing's central wiring." Sahadeva shook his head, as if mourning a fallen comrade. "Which must have caused something important to short-circuit, although I didn't have time to figure out just what. That was when it went berserk and pinched off my finger. Actually," he said, cheerfully, "I was quite impressed. The central one broadcast its misfiring nerve signals to all of its companion units. And anyway it was my fault for leaving them on but idle, instead of just turning them off like I should have."

"But why?" Arjuna asked.

"Why... what?"

"Why _make _such horrible things?"

"They're not horrible," Nakula said, defensive again. "They're _brilliant._"

"We asked mother for a pet crab," Sahadeva said, still smiling at nothing in particular, "but she wouldn't let us have one. So we did this instead."

"_These _would be better than a real pet. You wouldn't have to clean up after these or change their water. And there was no point in making just one when we'd acquired enough material to make a dozen."

" 'Acquired'?"

"Um..."

"What are you going to tell Mom about your finger?!" Arjuna asked Sahadeva.

"I'm going to tell her that it hurts very much."

"No, I mean, _how _you lost--"

"Oh. The truth."

"NO!" Nakula protested. "She'll ground us for a year! You know Mom, she's completely irrational when it comes to things like this! She grounded us that time we took the glass out of the windows on the fortieth floor to make that laser cannon, remember?!"

"To be fair," Sahadeva said, gently, "I think that was more an issue of mother being attached to those particular windows, than of her being opposed in principle to us having a laser cannon. Arjuna, would you be so kind as to hold me? I really do think that I'm going to faint this time."

Arjuna scrambled to catch a hold of Sahadeva's shoulders while his little brother swooned, mumbling softly, "It was wonderful, you should have seen it. They moved in a pack, just like insects..."

Arjuna was about to open his mouth say something about how _insects _did not move in _packs_ – he had at least retained that much information from his lessons – when he suddenly heard a shout from the other end of the hall. "HOLY BLOODY HELL!"

Arjuna turned his head and saw not one, but two palace guards standing at the end of the hallway, surveying the scene in front of them with gaping jaws and bulging eyes.

Nakula cursed underneath his breath. "We weren't fast enough," he said. "I knew we should have gotten out of here faster."

* * *

IV.

Arjuna thought that it must have been the first time in nearly a month that his entire family was all together, in one place, at one time. It was unfortunate, however, that the place was a hospital, and that the time was late at night.

"Look," Sahadeva said, holding up his severed stump of a finger to anybody who came near, "You can see my bone." He somehow seemed quite pleased with himself. In reality Sahadeva's finger was covered in so many thick layers of bandages that the exposed bone was impossible to see. But Sahadeva had seen his bone earlier that day when the nurses had been treating him, and this brief glimpse of his internal anatomy seemed to have for some reason brought him great happiness.

Arjuna was sitting beside Sahadeva's bed, which was uncomfortable, because it was inside a hospital room, and hospital rooms were uncomfortable, but at least it was better than being in the hallway outside the room, which Arjuna could see clearly through a glass panel in one wall. Arjuna's mother was twisting Nakula's ear and yelling furiously at him, Yudhisthira was pacing back and forth and wringing his hands and looking for all the world like he wished that he knew what to do but hadn't a clue, Bhima was stomping around behind Yudhisthira and telling him something that Arjuna supposed was a half-command to stop pacing, and Grandpa Bhisma was there too, which made things even worse, because Arjuna knew that Grandpa Bhisma would have never have left the palace if it hadn't been a very serious matter.

"Nakula is in trouble," Sahadeva said, worry showing on his face for the first time.

"Yeah, well, it looks like Mom is giving him an earful. Or trying to twist off his ear."

"That's not fair. It was my project, too."

"Yeah, but you're the one who lost a finger. So you get sympathy. That's how it works."

"Do you think they'll find my finger? The rest of it, I mean." Sahadeva looked down at his own mangled hand. "I like seeing my bone," he said. "It's not every day that I get to see my bone. But I think that, if I had a choice between being able to see bone forever, or having a finger forever, I would rather have a finger. Forever."

"Oh... I'm sure they'll find it," Arjuna said, for lack of anything better to say.

"Hmm," Sahadeva said thoughtfully, folding his good hand over his other hand. Then he turned his head and fixed his slightly intense, unsettling, golden-eyed gaze on something just over Arjuna's shoulder. "Hello. Did you want to see my bone too?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Duryodhana asked, stepping up beside Arjuna. Arjuna was startled. He hadn't even heard his cousin come into the room. But then again, Duryodhana seemed to have an odd talent for being able to sneak around when he wanted to. Arjuna was immediately grateful that Duryodhana was there, however. He understood that Duryodhana had come to do his particular version of damage control - Arjuna had seen him in action before. Intervening between Nakula and Arjuna's mother, calming down Yudhisthira, flashing his charismatic grin left and right and doing his best to lower everyone's collective blood pressure. Arjuna could guess that Grandpa Bhisma had probably called him over for that purpose.

But that would be in a few moments. For now, it would have been impolite to not stop by and see the injured party.

"Look," Sahadeva said, holding his bloody, bandaged stump of a finger out to Duryodhana, "you could see my bone."

"Kiddo, that's not something to be proud of."

"I don't understand why not," Sahadeva said, genuinely confused.

Duryodhana laughed, then slung his arm around Arjuna's shoulder, and leaned over and whispered into Arjuna's ear, "How are you doing?"

"Me? I'm not the one missing a finger."

"No, I mean... Just in general. How are you doing?"

"Mm." Arjuna could tell that Duryodhana had not forgotten the conversation they had had earlier that day. "Better," he said. "At least I still have all of my fingers."

"That's perspective for you." Duryodhana gave Arjuna's shoulder a brief squeeze, then he pulled away from Arjuna and said, "Well, it looks like I have to stick my neck into the bloodbath out there." He jerked his thumb in the direction of the hallway behind the room.

"Arjuna should go with you," Sahadeva suddenly said. "The first thing you have to do is separate Mom and Nakula. Arjuna, you can use your hands and pry them apart if you have to." Sahadeva leaned back in his bed, again, and closed his eyes, again. "I'd like to dream for a little bit," he said.

Arjuna looked up at Duryodhana, who was giving Sahadeva a funny look. Arjuna had seen Duryodhana give this same funny look to both Nakula and Sahadeva on occasion, before. It was a slightly suspicious, slightly worried look. Arjuna had seen Duryodhana give his younger brothers this look when somebody had remarked on how unnaturally beautiful the twins were; when either Nakula or Sahadeva said something so intelligent or sophisticated than a nine-year-old child could not possibly have uttered it; or sometimes, when Sahadeva said something just so weird that for an brief moment it felt as if one could feel the entire world of Kuru tilting this way or that, spinning a way that it was not supposed to be spinning, that there was something slightly wrong and slightly off in the universe around them.

"Come on," Duryodhana said, "Let's get this over with." He led Arjuna out into the hallway, which was, of course, filled with chaos.

Arjuna loved his cousin Duryodhana, maybe almost as much as he loved his brother Bhima, but Arjuna was also quiet and observant and was not oblivious to the fact that Duryodhana was vain about his often-lauded handsome looks. Arjuna sometimes wondered how Duryodhana was going to feel, ten years down the line, when he was growing middle-aged but the twins would be only just reaching the peak of their young adulthood, and all of the reporters and photographers would be lavishing attention upon the beautiful twins instead of upon Duryodhana himself. Arjuna thought that if he were Duryodhana, he wouldn't exactly be happy about it. That was why sometimes, Arjuna felt a little bit sorry for Duryodhana. He wished that he could do more, could _be _more, for Duryodhana. Sometimes, deep within his secret heart of hearts, Arjuna silently wished that Duryodhana could be his oldest brother, instead of--

"Arjuna!" Yudhisthira had his hands around Arjuna's forearm almost immediately. "You were there with them, weren't you?! Why didn't you--?!"

"Easy now," Bhima said, prying Yudhisthira's fingers off Arjuna's arm. "Nobody deserves blame for this but the evil little monsters themselves."

"I'm not EVIL!" Nakula shouted. "Just misunderstood!" He twisted his own ear out of his mother's grip and railed angrily, "I mean, I built a robot! A _robot! _Don't people normally get _awards_ and stuff for building robots as smart as mine?!"

"I'm not sure about a reward," Grandpa Bhisma said, looming over Nakula crossly, "but I certainly agree that you deserve _something _for ripping out half of the electrical wiring in the boiler room of the east-wing basement."

"I needed parts."

"How did you manage to rip wiring out of the wall, anyway?" Bhima momentarily sounded more impressed than angry.

"It was easy. A retard could have done it--"

"Nakula, watch your mouth!"

"All we had to do was use a laser-cutter to peel off the--"

"A _laser-cutter_?! Where did you get a laser-cutter?!"

"What is this, an inquisition? I don't understand why I'm in trouble. It's not illegal to build robots."

"You're in trouble," Arjuna's mother said, in the low and dangerous voice that she only used when someone was _really_ in trouble, "because if it hadn't been for you and this ridiculous project of yours, your brother would still have all of his fingers."

Ouch, thought Arjuna, watching Nakula's cheeks redden and his lower lip beginning to tremble. If Nakula had a weak spot, it was Sahadeva. "It's not my fault!" Nakula protested again, his voice breaking. "I never meant for him to get hurt." Nakula sniffled, finally and for the first time that evening looking and sounding like the nine-year-old child that he actually was. It didn't matter that Sahadeva didn't blame his brother, nor that Nakula knew that Sahadeva didn't blame him, as he knew all of Sahadeva's thoughts and feelings. Nakula still blamed himself, and that was all that mattered.

"Come here," Arjuna's mother said, resting her hand on Nakula's shoulder and trying to pull him in toward her. But Nakula angrily shrugged off her touch and said, tearfully, "You should have just gotten us that pet crab like we asked for!"

"But that would have been letting the terrorists win," Bhima said, without a trace of humor in his voice. He took his mother by her arm and she clutched at him, gratefully. "Let's go," he said, quietly, by Bhima standards. "Either the doctors can help Sahadeva, or they can't. There's nothing we can change by being here or not. And if Sahadeva still doesn't have a finger by tomorrow, then that's really his own fault."

"Bhima! What a terrible thing to say about your brother."

"You're only saying that because you're a mom and it's what you're supposed to say."

Arjuna's mother sighed, but said nothing more as she allowed Bhima to lead her away.

Which left Nakula, who turned his tearful golden eyes up toward Yudhisthira and Grandpa Bhisma, imploring his fate.

"Grounded," Yudhisthira said.

"That's not nearly enough," Grandpa Bhisma said. He sounded impatient with and disappointed in Yudhisthira.

"Grounded, and he has to replace all of the wiring in the basement that he ruined," Yudhisthira tried again.

"Not just him. Both of them. Whether Sahadeva has nine fingers or ten."

"But the robots were good," Nakula sniffled. "Tell me that they were good."

Yudhisthira sighed and rubbed his temples. To Arjuna, he looked very pale, and very tired. Grandpa Bhisma led Nakula away and Yudhisthira followed; that left Arjuna and Duryodhana alone.

Arjuna turned to Duryodhana and said, "You never said a single word." It was normally not like Duryodhana to hold his tongue for more than a few seconds at a time.

"Oh. No. But it was just so entertaining to watch. I didn't want to interrupt."

* * *

V.

Thunder was rumbling low and incessantly in the sky that night. Which meant, naturally, that instead of sleeping through the night, Arjuna jumped out of his bed at three in the morning, threw on a coat, and eagerly ran out into the palace gardens. He whirled himself around in the flowerbeds, his arms and fingers spread wide, feeling the electricity in the air, waiting for the taste of rain on his tongue.

Then Arjuna heard a cough.

Arjuna froze in mid-whirl, his sense sharp and alert. His eyesight might have been miserable, but his ears were good enough, and he could hear voices, distant and low. Arjuna crept through the bushes and the flowers until he spied two shadowed figures sitting on a bench below a hanging lamp, burning low and casting dim shadows over them. They were Bhima and Yudhisthira. Arjuna would have recognized Bhima's enormous profile anywhere. Arjuna hunkered down behind a bush and watched them, silently, holding his breath.

"I'm just saying, that's your third one in the past hour," Bhima said, his normally loud, rumbling voice restrained to what passed for a Bhima-whisper.

"I know," Yudhisthira said, inhaling deeply from the smokeroll in his hand. "And believe me, I'm not smoking them because I _like _these awful things."

Arjuna bit his lower lip. He hadn't known that his oldest brother smoked. Was this something new?

"Grandpa Bhisma told me that I would never be taken seriously by my own Ministers if I couldn't share a smokeroll with them," Yudhisthira said, smoke rolling out of his mouth and nose as he spoke. "That's what I'll tell Mother when she finds out."

"Maybe you should stop listening so blindly to Grandpa Bhisma."

"Grandpa Bhisma is a great man," Yudhisthira said, vehemently.

"I know," Bhima answered, a few shades short of dismissively, "but even great men can give bad advice."

"Duryodhana has been using these for years, and he's fine. They're not going to hurt me. They just taste terrible."

"Yes, but Duryodhana doesn't ever smoke three of them in the space of an hour."

Yudhisthira sighed. "Bhima..."

"Sometimes I think you have an addictive personality."

"What is that supposed to mean, anyway?"

"I don't know, I heard it on the media console."

"I can't even remember the last time I watched the console," Yudhisthira said, blowing a smoke-ring out into the ominous, rumbling night.

"Well, you've been busy."

"Yes, busy," Yudhisthira mumbled. "Busy meeting the Ministers at six in the morning, busy being debriefed on security matters at seven, busy with charity breakfast for earthquake victims at eight, busy with recording a public address at nine, busy with Parliament members kissing my feet at ten, and so on, and so forth, too busy and too important to ever be able to see our mother or our brothers until one of them has to go and lose a finger, oh yes, so important are we." Yudhisthira fidgeted with his smokeroll in his fingers. "Grandpa Bhisma didn't even bother to give me the 'you're responsible for your brothers' speech this time."

"Because he understands that you're busy. Because it's largely his fault that you're busy. He's the one giving you all that stuff to do."

"Or maybe he's just given up on me." Yudhisthira lowered his head, his long bangs falling over his face, casting it in shadow. "Why not just be honest about it? Madri-mama trusted those two to me, and I've hardly been there for them since. Now Nakula is a sociopathic monster and Sahadeva is maimed for life--"

" 'Sociopathic monster' might be a bit of an exaggeration--"

"How many nine-year-olds do you know that build a hoard of attack-robots just for _fun_?!" Yudhisthira burst out, gesturing with his dwindling smokeroll angrily. "When Arjuna was nine years old, he was drawing with crayons and making paper-mache elephants for fun! That's what _normal _nine-year-old boys do! They don't go around stealing the electrical wiring from walls or speaking with the vocabulary of graduate students or using words in their sentences that even _I _don't understand!"

Bhima stared at his brother for a long, long time. Then he said, "You're afraid of them."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Yes, you are. Mother is too. That's probably why she had those three shots of lickfire when I was with her tonight."

"Bhima--"

"Look at me," Bhima said, and both Arjuna and Yudhisthira looked. Bhima was tall - at least two heads taller than Yudhisthira, who was tall to begin with - and broad-shouldered and thick-limbed, a giant among men. He always had to duck when entering doorways and always had to fold his legs awkwardly when entering autos or hoverers. Because of his Gift, Bhima could easily lift an auto above his head, bend metal with his bare hands, or cause the ground to tremble and shake when he walked, if he forgot to control himself. Bhima could never blend into a crowd and could never pass unnoticed anywhere. "I'm used to people being afraid of me," he said. "But you never were afraid. Because you're _better _than most people."

Yudhisthira shook his head vehemently. "Bhima, don't--"

"Don't what?"

"Don't get all mushy on me."

"I wasn't going to. I was going to point out that you're not _being _better than most people right now, you're just being a fearful idiotic prat like all the rest of them. Look, I know that Nakula and Sahadeva can be scary. They're devakins, but they're in a whole different league than you or me. I mean, you and I can at least act like humans most of the time. But Nakula and Sahadeva are just _inhuman _and there's no way around that. And that's why they really need you. Especially Nakula. Believe it or not, I remember what I was like when I was nine years old, and it wasn't all that different from the way that Nakula is now, only without the robots. Sometimes I was scared of myself. Sometimes I was afraid that I was so strong that I might hurt you or Mama or Papa without meaning it. Sometimes I look at Nakula and I see that he's so smart and so restless that he doesn't know what to do with himself, but he's at least smart enough to figure out that he's not supposed to be as smart as he is, and that scares him. When I was nine years old, I had you, and you kept me grounded. You kept me human. Nakula doesn't have you, and without you, he's going to keep playing the role of monster He's _especially_ going to keep playing the role of the monster if that's the expectation that you have of him. It may not look like it, but he is looking up to you, you know."

"You're the one who called him a monster and a 'terrorist' today," Yudhisthira said, defensively.

"I was joking. You're sitting here being serious."

"So what am I supposed to do?! You said it yourself. I've been busy." Yudhisthira rolled the end of his smokeroll between his fingers angrily. "Grandpa Bhisma gave Duryodhana the same amount of work that he's given me, and Duryodhana still has time for all of his brothers. I don't know how he _does it_."

"Oh, that's easy," Bhima answered. "Duryodhana has ninety-nine brothers to delegate _his _princely duties out to. You only have me."

"Bhima, you've been a tremendous help, but--"

"I know I've been," Bhima said, "but if you want time to see Nakula or Sahadeva or even, you know, eat or sleep, you're going to have to start delegating too."

"And who am I supposed to delegate to?"

"Arjuna--"

"The 'great warrior'?" Yudhisthira laughed. "He's still just a kid."

"He's thirteen years old, that makes him a man in the eyes of the law. He can step into any post that you appoint for him."

"Bhima... Be realistic. Arjuna has neither the knowledge nor the intelligence nor the charisma needed to step into any post that I could give him."

Bhima made a noise in the back of his throat, as if he were trying to say something, but then fell into an uncomfortable silence.

"Besides," Yudhisthira went on, when the silence had apparently become too awkward for him, "you heard the priest at his birthday. Arjuna is supposed to become a great warrior."

"Grandpa Bhisma made him quit the sword today," Bhima said, with uncharacteristic softness for Bhima.

Yudhisthira jerked his head up, suddenly. "He did?"

"...Yeah."

"Oh." Yudhisthira took one last inhalation from his smokeroll, then said, in a very soft voice, "It's about time, too. Kind of painful to watch him keep trying, wasn't it?"

Arjuna pressed his burning cheeks to the grass beneath him and felt angry tears trickling down his face, runs of snot dripping from his nose. But he could not sniffle. He couldn't give himself away, not now.

"I don't know, it's just..." Yudhisthira snuffed out the stub of his smokeroll with his fingers. "I trust Mr. Dhaumya. If he says he had a vision, then he probably had a vision. But sometimes I don't trust _them._" Yudhisthira pointed up at the rumbling black sky above them. "The gods must be crazy if they think that Arjuna is cut out to be a great warrior. Do you remember the last time we tried to take that poor kid camping? He wouldn't even kill a spider that he found on his bedroll, let alone come hunting with us. Not that I would have trusted him with any of our rifles, anyway. Not with eyes like his." Yudhisthira looked down at his hands and said, "And sometimes I think the gods must be crazy if they think that someone like me was _born to be a king_, or whatever such nonsense."

"That's why kings have brothers!" Bhima repeated, exasperated. "You can't expect to keep doing almost everything by yourself! _Father _didn't rule like that."

"So maybe I should ask Arjuna to start doing more." Yudhisthira stood up, and stretched his arms over his head. "But what am I supposed to ask him to do?"

Bhima frowned, pondering this. Finally he said, "Hey, it's Pumpkin, remember? He's never let us down yet."

"I hope you're right." Yudhisthira looked up at the sky and said, "And I hope that I'm not setting him up to fail. The gods should know that he's likely had just about enough of failure by now."

Bhima stood up and blew out the hanging lamp. Then the two of them walked back through the garden, toward the palace, through the darkness.

And Arjuna still lied in the grass beneath his bush, his eyes burning, his breath trembling in his throat.

Finally, he forced himself to stand back up, brushing dirt and grass off his pajamas, wiping away his snot with his sleeve, indulging himself in a nice, loud sniffle.

_I wish I could do more for them_, Arjuna thought furiously, _I wish I could _be_ more for them. _

But he had nothing to offer his brothers. Neither a warrior nor a statesman, lacking in both strength and smarts, blind as a bat during the day and clumsy and useless with his hands.

Arjuna wandered through the darkened and deserted gardens, feeling the storm growing in the sky above him, deriving no joy from the otherwise delicious shiver of anticipation in the air. He walked with his fingers splayed out, lightly touching the leaves and the flowers that he passed as he walked, thinking dark thoughts. Arjuna didn't even realize that he was at an outer wall of the palace compounds until he nearly walked right into it.

Arjuna looked to his left, then to his right. He saw the security cameras mounted on the wall. He thought of the guards posted outside his own bedroom, who knew that he was out in the gardens and would not expect him to come back inside until well after the storm had broken and he had had his fill of the rain. They knew him well, those guards. Which meant that, say, if he were to go somewhere, he wouldn't be missed for a while...

But the security cameras.

_Go where?! Are you crazy?!_

Arjuna walked along the length of the wall, letting his fingertips trail along its cold bricks, thinking to himself, there _had _to be something that he had to offer to his brothers, to everyone. There _had _to be some meaning to what the priest has said, to what his deva-father had proclaimed. There had to be some reason that he had been given the unknown devaweapon, the unknown Gift, slumbering inside of him.

But whatever Arjuna's answers were, they were not to be found among his family, or even within his princely palace. Arjuna knew this more certainly than he knew anything. The storm was whispering it to him.

_I could find what I need to find_, Arjuna thought, looking up at the pitch-dark sky, _if only the cameras wouldn't catch me going over the wall--_

He wished, and the storm obliged. There was a crack of thunder and a sudden flash of lightning streaking down from the sky; and then an explosion of sparks as the lightning smashed into an antenna soaring high above the royal palace. A sudden wave of darkness descended upon the palace, and the gardens, rolling out to engulf the entire city of Hastinapura.

For a moment, there was nothing but darkness, and the sound of wind.

Arjuna was already halfway over the wall. He knew that he only had a few precious seconds before the palace's backup generators kicked into gear, before electricity was restored to the palace and the city around it. But a few seconds were all that Arjuna needed. For once, his clumsy hands and feet seemed to obey his every command. By the time that the city's lights came bursting back into life, Arjuna was already over the palace wall and scrambling down the shadowed, sea-splattered cliff below the palace, making his way toward the beach and then the city down below.

* * *

VI.

At the southern base of the cliff upon which the palace sat, a small amount of space had been set aside as a wildlife preserve and bird sanctuary: a marsh sheltered by the rocks above, and a scrubby forest along the edge of where the coastline turned from rock to sand. Arjuna made his way through the cold and damp grass beneath the trees in the forest, the cuffs of his thin pajamas soaked through with night dew, shivering in his coat. He was beginning to realize that going on a middle-of-the-night quest to find himself while wearing nothing but boots, pajamas, and a coat was actually a rather bad idea. Well, at least he had had the presence of mind to slip his corrective lenses into his eyes into his eyes before he had left his room earlier that night. Which meant that he could at least see as well as he normally could see, which was to say, not very well.

If not for the storm blanketing the sky, it would have been dawn soon. Arjuna was also beginning to realize that very soon it would be morning, and then he would be _missed_, and then there would be all sorts of trouble. Arjuna couldn't even begin to imagine how much trouble. He had a reasonable idea, however, that whatever he was supposed to find for himself, he likely wouldn't be able to find it in the space of just a few hours.

Arjuna closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the dry, scratchy bark of a tree. _Father, what am I doing?_ he asked. He wasn't sure which of his fathers he was asking for guidance. But as usual, he heard no answer.

Arjuna listened to the storm in the sky above, rumbling and flashing its threatening lightning, but still refusing to break, holding out for some strange reason. Arjuna thought of the storm as _the storm _and himself as _part of the storm_, but did not think of the storm, or of some mythical king of the Gods named Indra, as his _father_, not the way that he thought of the man that he remembered as his _father._ Arjuna's father, his real father, was the one who had held his hand the first time he had been taken to a temple to pray, who had kissed his forehead to make him stop crying that time when he had fallen and scraped his knee at the beach, who had taken him out on the ocean in a boat for the first time, who had exclaimed over his largely incomprehensible crayon drawings as if they were profound works of art. Arjuna also remembered _mother, _or rather, _mothers_, because he had once had two of them, hadn't he? But then one of them had--

_white cold flesh empty eyes dark shadows nana screaming_

No, mustn't go there.

Nobody ever spoke of what had happened that night. Not Arjuna's mother, not Arjuna's brothers, not anybody, which was good, because it at least saved Arjuna the indignity of pretending not to remember what he had seen. It was just so annoying, having his mother and Yudhisthira fussing over him as if he might have been _traumatized, _or something. But Arjuna hadn't gotten the worst of the sympathy. No, that had been reserved for Nakula and Sahadeva. For all the good (or harm) that it did them. Today, neither Nakula nor Sahadeva had any memory of their mother Madri, and Nakula seemed rather cold-heartedly (in Arjuna's opinion) dismissive of her, whereas Sahadeva seemed as detached from the idea that Kunti was not his real mother as he was from most cold, hard, concrete facts in life.

Arjuna stepped away from the comforting tree bark and continued on his way.

Daylight, struggling to break through the clouds blanketing the sky, began, slowly to filter into the air around Arjuna. Arjuna smelled the electricity in the air, the impending threat of lightning, and let that guide him. Still, neither the weak dawn light nor the currents in the air could be much of a guide in that dark, murky forest. Arjuna fumbled among the blurred shadows of trees and scrub, stumbling several times over unseen somethings, until--

Arjuna finally tripped over something soft and warm. He went sprawling, of course. Face-down into the dewy, damp grass.

It took Arjuna a few moments to realize that he was now lying across someone's lap.

Arjuna quickly rolled away from the warm body beneath him and sat up, brushing wet grass off his pajamas and coat. In his haste, he somehow managed to get his own two feet tangled up beneath him, and he quickly stumbled, and then fell again, this time landing on his behind, back down into the wet grass.

Well, now at least he was sitting across from whomever he had previously tripped over.

Arjuna squinted through the murk of the stormy morning, and could vaguely make out the shape of a human, sitting cross-legged in the grass--

"Hello, there," the mystery shadow said.

Arjuna was startled to realize that the person sitting across from him was a boy who must have been close to his own age.

"I'm sorry," the boy said. "Are you hurt?"

Arjuna finally found his voice. "No," he answered, honestly. "Um... Are you?"

"Oh. No."

"I'm sorry," Arjuna said, quickly. He stood up again, and this time managed to succeed in staying standing. "I didn't mean to interrupt, um--"

"That's all right. I've already been sitting here for a while now. It was probably about time that I took a break anyway." The boy stood up in one fluid, graceful motion, which Arjuna thought should have been technically impossible for a person who had been sitting in one position for a while to do. The boy stepped toward Arjuna and said, "Are you... Are you lost?" He cocked his head, a blurred motion of shadow. "Forgive me, but are those your... pajamas?"

Arjuna knew that he had poor eyesight, but he also knew that the forest and the morning were dark, and since he could hardly see a single feature of the boy standing only a few feet in front of him, he wondered how the boy could possibly see anything of him, let alone his clothing. Arjuna licked his lips. "Yes," he said, and then, "Can you really see me?"

"Yes," the boy said, "I know how to _see_." He tapped the center of his forehead, as if this explained everything. Then the boy asked again, "Are you lost?"

"No, I was just... looking for something."

"Then you've lost something."

"No, I don't think I had it before--"

"Ah. A quest." The boy said _quest _the same way that Arjuna thought a normal person might say _buttered toast. _The boy, his face and features still in shadow, tilted his head and said, "And you're wearing your pajamas." Then the boy tilted his face upward and added, "You probably should have brought a raincoat."

"Oh no, I'm, um, I'm okay in rain."

"Not in your pajamas," the boy insisted. He took Arjuna's hand and began pulling him through the woods. "Come," he said. And Arjuna followed, for lack of any better choice.

As light slowly filtered into the gray dawn around them, Arjuna was finally able to make out some features of the boy who has now leading him by his hand. The first thing that Arjuna noticed was that the boy was naked from the waist up. The second thing Arjuna noticed was that elaborate, interlocking whirls of shadow laced across the boy's back, shoulders, and neck. Arjuna had the same markings on his body. They were the markings of a devakin.

"Are you a priest?" Arjuna asked, even though it was a stupid question, he already knew the answer. Who else but a priest would be mediating half-naked in the woods in the middle of the night?

"Someday," the boy answered, with a light laugh. Arjuna could see more of him, now. He was thin, probably pale - it was hard to tell in the not-light of the stormy dawn - and his head was topped with a crown of closely-shaven, reddish-brown hair. His hair and skin color clearly marked him as a foreigner. The boy turned toward Arjuna and asked, "And you?" Arjuna noticed that the boy had something funny on his forehead, a birthmark or a scar, a funny teardrop-shaped shadow curling down between his eyes.

"I don't know what I am," Arjuna answered, honestly.

"Well, that makes sense, if you're on a quest." The woods were beginning to thin around them. Suddenly the boy led Arjuna around the side of a tree and into a clearing full of dim, moist light. They had crossed the boundaries of the nature preserve and were now on the outskirts of the city surrounding the palace on the cliff high above them. In the poorer section of the city, Arjuna noted. The houses here were small and ramshackle and pressed close together, huddling among the rocks and the dirt at the edge of the forest.

It was still early in the morning, and the world was silent.

The boy led Arjuna carefully across the unpaved dirt streets leading into the makeshift town in front of them. Arjuna noticed that the boy's feet were bare, but well-callused. The two of them walked together in silence, their hands laced together, until finally they paused in front of the door to a home which, to Arjuna, looked no different from the rest of the small homes all around them.

"In here," the boy said, leading Arjuna right in through the front door, which was unlocked. The boy stepped through the door and glanced quickly to his right, where Arjuna saw some hooks which might have normally held someone's coat and hat. But the hooks were empty. Arjuna stepped in behind the boy and squinted through the darkness of the home he was now intruding upon. From the entrance he could see two rooms set off to either side of him. One was a living room, with a couch and a media console and shelves upon shelves of neatly-lined-up but dusty books covering every available surface of the walls. The other was a kitchen, where counters and a table and chairs and hanging pots and pans all jostled for space, old and cluttered but clean except for a single used glass that someone had left sitting next to the sink, waiting to be washed.

As soon as Arjuna had removed his boots, the boy took his hand again and led him wordlessly up the steep wooden stairs behind the living room. The stairs creaked and groaned beneath them as they walked. "My father has been gone for a week," the boy explained, "since he was called out on assignment from the Council. But he should be home today. I don't know what time. My mother works uptown. She leaves before the sun rises. She'll be back when the sun sets."

"So we're all alone here?"

"Yes."

They entered what Arjuna assumed was the boy's bedroom. It was small and narrow. There was a narrow bed piled high with quilts sewn in exotic, alien patterns Arjuna had never seen before. There was not much more in the room, save for the photographs taped up all over the walls - a family of three, mother and father and son, smiling and posing for the camera, over and over again. They were old-fashioned photographs, the kind that were printed on paper, not the more modern holographic images that Arjuna's family favored. Arjuna squinted at the photographs. The mother in those photographs had dark skin and shining dark hair, as did most of the members of Arjuna's family, as did most of the people of Kuru. But the father in those photographs was, like his son, pale-skinned and pale-eyed, with dusty red-brown hair and slight wrinkles around his eyes. Arjuna realized with a start that in most of the photographs, the boy and his parents were wearing strange clothes, the likes of which Arjuna had not seen before - thick furs and woven scarves around their necks.

The boy drew back the shade across the only window in the room, flooding it with stormy early-morning almost-light. Then he flipped a switch and turned on the light embedded in the ceiling, which flickered and buzzed and finally decided to flood the room around them with harsh, glaring brightness. Arjuna blinked in the sudden light, then finally got his first really good look at his host. The boy was slipping on a shirt, covering up the markings across his back. But then the boy turned slightly toward Arjuna as he buttoned up his shirt, and Arjuna saw the boy's forehead clearly for the first time. There was a blue mark curling down from beneath the part in his hair, curving across the height of his forehead and finally fading away right between his eyebrows. The mark was neither a scar, nor the splotchy imperfection of a birthmark - it simply was, the way that a tattoo simply _was _on the surface of a person's skin. In short, it was exactly the same as the devakin markings across the boy's back, as well as across Arjuna's back. Arjuna realized with a start that the mark on the boy's forehead looked like a closed eye, turned on its side.

"Here," the boy said, opening a closet that Arjuna hadn't even noticed and tossing out shirts and pants on top of his bed. "If you're going to go on a quest, you at least need some real clothes to do it in."

"Thanks," Arjuna said awkwardly, holding up a shirt to examine it critically. It was thick and warm and embroidered all over in those strange, alien patterns. Arjuna put down the shirt and turned to the boy and said, "Why are you helping me?"

"Hmm?" The boy looked startled, as if Arjuna had asked him why the sky was green. "Because you're supposed to help people who need help. Especially when they fall directly into your lap. That's not exactly a subtle sign that the devas meant for me to help you."

Arjuna laughed. He liked this boy. He wondered if all priests, or all priests-in-training, rather, saw the world in such perfectly sensible terms. "But I don't even know your name," Arjuna said. "You let me into your home and I haven't even told you _my _name."

"Okay, then. I'm Ashwatthama."

"I'm... Juna."

"Juna, then."

"Um," Arjuna said, since he had now picked out a shirt and a pair of soft pants, but wasn't exactly sure how to ask Ashwatthama to turn away from him while he changed.

"Oh," said Ashwatthama, getting the hint. "I'll go downstairs and get us some breakfast."

He left, leaving Arjuna alone with his new clothes. Arjuna threw off his coat and pajamas, folded them neatly, and stood for a moment, naked save for his underpants, breathing in the warm and close and _nice _air of this house. He turned his head and noticed that Ashwatthama had left his closet door open. Sitting on a shelf inside the closet was a bronze statue of Shiva, his dozen arms outstretched, his feet frozen in dance. Arjuna did not think that a closet was a very respectful place to put a statue of Lord Shiva, but then again, there did not seem to be any other space _outside _the closet for the statue to go. Inside the closet door was hung a faded and old poster of a singer whom Arjuna did not recognize. At the bottom of the poster was written something in a script that looked as alien to Arjuna as the patterns on the boy's bed and on Arjuna's new shirt. Arjuna squinted, squinted hard, and realized finally that the script on the bottom of that poster wasn't entirely alien after all. Arjuna had studied it before, once, long ago, at his Grandpa Bhisma's request. It was one of the writing systems used on Panchala.

Well, then.

Arjuna slipped on his new clothes, which were pleasantly warm, and gingerly made his way back down the creaking stairs. Ashwatthama was clattering around in the kitchen, grilling bread in what to Arjuna looked like a painfully antique toaster oven, slicing more bread with an enormous knife. Another statue of Shiva – this time done in a tasteful gold – watched over the kitchen from its perch on a shelf near the only window.

Arjuna pulled open the door to the small refrigerator unit set in the base of a wall, and asked, "Do you have any milk?"

Ashwatthama dropped his knife with a clatter.

Arjuna hurriedly closed the refrigerator unit, baffled at Ashwatthama's reaction - his hunched shoulders, his drooping head. "Um," said Arjuna, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." Arjuna still wasn't sure what exactly he had done wrong, but apologizing seemed to be the right thing to do.

Ashwatthama bent down and picked up his knife. "No, I'm sorry," Ashwatthama said, dropping the knife into the sink and choosing a new one from a drawer. He turned his back to Arjuna and began slicing bread again. "We have no milk. Nor eggs."

"Oh," Arjuna said. He did not understand why a person would not or could not have milk or eggs, but he could see that Ashwatthama was ashamed to not be able to provide for his guest. Arjuna opened his mouth to say something more, but he never got the chance. Because that was when the sirens high on the cliff above them went off.

Ashwatthama dropped his knife again. His eyes went wide. "Is it a tidal wave?!"

"No," Arjuna said, his stomach sinking to his knees. "Tidal wave is two short and one long... A continuous sound means a state of emergency. Lockdown."

"Are we being invaded?" Ashwatthama said in a small voice. He ran over to the living room and peered out the windows there. "There are soldiers in the streets!" he cried out, alarmed.

And now Arjuna could hear them clearly through the thin walls of the house, stomping in formation through the streets of the town.

"This is bad, this is bad," Ashwatthama fretted, drawing the curtains over the living room window and trembling. "Lockdown means we can't leave the house, right?"

"...Right."

Ashwatthama turned toward the media console and switched it on. "Please don't let it be Panchala invading," he pleaded as the console flashed on.

The blank console was immediately filled with the image of a woman reading urgently from an unseen teleprompter, as flashing letters scrolled across the bottom of the screen, and--

Arjuna groaned as a picture of himself appeared in the upper right corner of the screen. It wasn't even a good picture.

Ashwatthama switched off the media console with a click. He turned slowly toward Arjuna, his eyes wide. "You..."

Arjuna buried his head in his hands. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

" 'Juna.' Of _course._"

Arjuna turned away from him, listening to the sound of soldiers marching all around them, separated from Arjuna only by thin wooden walls and a single curtain drawn across a window. "I'll go now," Arjuna said, quickly. "I won't let them get you in trouble, so--"

"Wait," Ashwatthama said, suddenly reaching out to grasp Arjuna's hand, just like he had in the woods not too long before. "You _are _Prince Arjuna, aren't you? For real?"

"F-For real."

"Then you don't have to go, if you don't want to." Ashwatthama seemed nervous, but earnest. "I don't know why you ran away, but I know that you have a reason. And I know that there's a reason why I found you. Please... let me try to help you. I don't know if I can, but I want to try. It's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to help people. That's the type of priest I'm training to be... It's kind of complicated, um, but that's what it is that I do."

Arjuna shook his head. "My mother, my brothers, they'll be worried--"

"I know." Ashwatthama let go of Arjuna's hand. "Forgive me, Your Highness. It was presumptuous of me to--"

"No, it was _kind _of you." Arjuna walked away from the door and sat down on the couch in the living room, and said, forcing himself to give a confident smile, "I'm staying right here." He wasn't sure if Ashwatthama could help him or not, but he did know that he didn't want to leave this house yet. And that was enough.

Ashwatthama smiled with relief, then without a word, ran back into the kitchen to fetch their now slightly-burnt breakfast of grilled bread. Then he and Arjuna ate together, their hands clasped in prayer over their food, as the sirens on the cliff above sounded into the morning, and the soldiers filled the streets around them, and the unfulfilled promise of a storm rumbled in the sky above them.

* * *

VII.

"I don't even know why I left," Arjuna said as he picked idly at the edge of a pillow on the couch. It was now late afternoon, and he and Ashwatthama had been sitting - or rather, hiding - in the living room all day long, whispering to each other and nibbling ceaselessly on bread and a few spreads, almost all of which Arjuna found rather bland, but of course he could not tell his host that.

Mostly they talked about nothing in particular, movies and music that they liked, books that Ashwatthama had read. But only recently had Arjuna found the courage to broach the subject of the reason, or rather, the vague non-reason, why he been wandering through the woods in his pajamas and boots earlier that morning.

Ashwatthama was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Arjuna, nodding as he listened attentively. The sirens from the cliffs had stopped, but they could still hear soldiers stomping and the whirr of military hoverers patrolling the neighborhood around them every few minutes. "You told me that you were looking for something," Ashwatthama said.

"Maybe." Arjuna closed his eyes and squeezed the couch pillow to his chest. "I just want to, you know, _be _something... Or find whatever it is I'm supposed to be." He suddenly opened his eyes and looked at Ashwatthama and said, "I envy you."

"Me?"

"Yeah. It's easy for you. If your father is a priest, then you become a priest just like him. I know that's how it works."

Ashwatthama looked away from Arjuna. "It's not that simple," he said, in a quiet voice.

Arjuna suddenly wondered if he had made another rude mistake. "Your father isn't a priest?"

"He is, but..." Ashwatthama turned his head back toward Arjuna, forcing himself to smile. "Since you're a prince, I hardly think that you should be envying someone like _me. _I mean, you get all the choices in the world, right?"

"Yeah, but... Not really. You heard. Even the gods said that I'm supposed to be a warrior."

"So be a warrior."

"I don't think that I want to be."

"Then don't be a warrior."

Arjuna frowned. "You're not helping." He squeezed his pillow tighter. "Besides, I can't be a warrior anyway. I can't use a sword. Even Grandpa Bhisma had to give up on teaching me."

"Then maybe you need a different teacher. Or maybe you need a weapon that's not a sword." Ashwatthama's eyes suddenly lit up. "Have you tried using a bow?"

"You sound just like my cousin Duryodhana." Arjuna sighed grumpily. "Besides, I can't _see_. I could never use a bow."

"My father," Ashwatthama continued eagerly, ignoring Arjuna's protests, "just let him show you, he's the greatest archer on Kuru, he can teach you--"

"Listen, I don't think--"

Suddenly both boys fell silent, distracted by the sound of voices approaching the front door of the house.

"This is my home!" a man's voice, deep and thickly-accented, protested loudly. "I have the right to be walking to my own home!"

"Lockdown, sir, you're supposed to stay indoors--"

"I'm traveling on authority of the Council of Brahmins!" There was the sound of shuffling, struggling. "My papers--"

"Get his papers--"

"Hide!" Ashwatthama suddenly hissed, urgently.

Arjuna froze, glancing to the left and to the right, in a sudden panic. He could see no place to hide.

"Beneath the couch!" Ashwatthama hissed again.

Arjuna lifted up the fabric flap at the base of the couch and saw that it was indeed high enough off the ground for him to squeeze under. Taking a deep breath, Arjuna dove into the layer of dust beneath the couch and then wriggled around quickly, trying to position his face so that he could peek out and see what was going on--

Ashwatthama was hurriedly cleaning up the last traces of their ongoing meal-cum-snack-cum-meal-again, and rushing back and forth between the living room and the kitchen. Suddenly Arjuna heard the front door swinging open, and as he peeked out from beneath the fabric flap concealing him, Arjuna saw a middle-aged man in a hat and coat being forcibly marched through the door to his own house by two fully-suited soldiers. Arjuna recognized the man from the photographs in Ashwatthama's bedroom.

"Father!" Ashwatthama gasped, frozen halfway between the kitchen and living room with a plate of breadcrumbs in his hands.

"Ashwatthama! What are you doing--?"

"I heard the sirens and I came back--"

"His papers check out," one of the soldiers said, handing a sheaf of documents and what Arjuna thought might have been a passport to someone on the other side of the door. The two soldiers on either side of the man let go of his arms; he harrumphed angrily, and smoothed down his coat. "Indecent. Outrageous," he muttered. "Treating a priest like a criminal."

"Just following procedure, sir," one of the soldiers said, stepping around the man and further into the house. "We are the middle of a lockdown, sir."

"What are you doing?! Get out of my home!" Ashwatthama's father demanded, angrily. But the soldier ignored him, stepping around Ashwatthama and peering through his visored eyes at the living room. The soldier on the other side of Ashwatthama's father followed him, as did the one from behind Ashwatthama's father, stepping through the door and around the priest to join his companions, still holding the priest's papers and passport in his hand.

Ashwatthama asked his father something in a language that Arjuna vaguely recognized as being at least passingly similar to High Panchalan. One of the soldiers immediately turned toward them both and shouted angrily, "No foxspeak!"

Ashwatthama paled, but his father flushed with anger. "How dare you use that word in front of my son--!"

"What? You try to tell the kid that you're not a dirtfox?" The soldier laughed and turned away from them both. His companions were already busy rifling through the bookshelves in the living room. Arjuna held his breath and tried to silently slide farther back beneath the couch. He no longer dared to peek out at what was happening in the room around him, but he could hear well enough.

"Old man, bring me a flashbulb," one of the soldiers demanded.

"What for?"

"To test this passport of yours. I need to see if it has the right watermark."

"You said my papers were fine."

"Fine at first glance, but you can never trust a filthy dirtfox."

There was a long pause, a heavy silence. Arjuna thought he heard Ashwatthama sniffle. Then Arjuna heard footsteps, the sound of Ashwatthama's father walking into the kitchen. The sound of drawers opening and closing, rummaging around. Finally, Ashwatthama's father returned. "Here," he said.

"Father," Ashwatthama said, in a thin, high, trembly voice.

"It is all right," Ashwatthama's father said, in a low, almost urgent voice. "We have nothing to hide. Not anymore."

There was another pause, while Arjuna heard a soldier - the one standing right in front of the couch in front of him, no less - clicking through the different settings of the flashbulb Ashwatthama's father had given him. Arjuna could imagine the soldier holding the passport up in the air with one hand, holding the flashbulb behind it with another hand, squinting, peering at the hidden watermark that was surely there--

There was another long silence.

Then the sound of flipping pages. "Well, well," the soldier said. "This thing says you landed on our planet seven years ago."

"Yes."

"There's no watermark on this, dirtfox," the soldier said. "It's a fake."

"You are not looking at the right page." Ashwatthama's father sounded calm. "Contact the High Council itself if you wish to verify my credentials. They have employed me for seven years without a complaint, and would not have continued to employ me if I had ever once lied about myself to them. There are seers on the High Council who can see through lies."

"And I've heard that there are rogue priests who know how to lie so well that they can fool even other priests."

"Like that one who caused so much trouble on Panchala seven years ago," another soldier added.

Another pause. The sound of nervous breathing, from Ashwatthama.

"I've been patrolling this ghetto for ten years," one of the soldiers said, "and I've always had a hunch about you, dirtfox."

"But never an excuse to demand my papers until today?"

"Smart for a dirtfox."

"Or stupid," the first soldier added. "He was the one walking out and about during a lockdown."

"Fake passport," the second said, stepping toward the entryway where Arjuna assumed Ashwatthama and his father were still standing. "That ought to be enough grounds to arrest--"

That was when the soldier's voice abruptly cut off, replaced by a startled, choking gurgle. Arjuna heard a heavy thump, flashing footsteps faster than his ears could comprehend, then two more thumps. Then silence, until Ashwatthama cried out something in Panchalan again.

"We run," Ashwatthama's father answered, hurriedly. "Put on your shoes."

Ashwatthama babbled something else in Panchalan again. His father answered in Panchalan, and for a minute, there was a rapid-fire back-and-forth between them. Arjuna listened, his heart in his throat. Were the three soldiers dead? Had a murder - three murders - just occurred in the room he was in?!

More footsteps, running. Then silence. They were gone.

Arjuna scrambled out from beneath the couch, clumps of dust in his hair and all down the front of his new - stolen! - shirt. He nearly tripped over the first soldier, who was lying on his side right in front of the couch. Arjuna lowered his head and listened to the sound of the soldier breathing, watched his chest fall up and down. He wasn't dead. The other two weren't either. But they were out cold. There were signs of a struggle in the room - spilled books, an antenna snapped off the top of the media console.

Then Arjuna heard the commotion outside the house.

Without thinking, he ran headfirst through the front door, which was still swung open. Arjuna saw a dozen flashes of light, bright white then red and glaring. He saw an unbroken wall of masked and visored soldiers, a dozen rifles raising at once, Ashwatthama screaming and his father throwing himself over his son--

"Stop!" Arjuna cried out. "HALT!"

But it was too late. Safetylocks clicked back, triggers snapped; bullets were flying before any of the soldiers even realized that they were about to gun down their prince.

And still Arjuna's feet did not stop. He ran, pelting forward, headlong into the death flying toward him--

And then there was lightning in his hands.

Arjuna ground to a halt in front of Ashwatthama's father, feeling the spray of rain and tasting the rumble of thunder as he pulled back the string of his new bow. He braced the weapon against his chest, as expertly as if he had been handling a bow all of his life, his hand gripped firmly around its wooden body, which flickered like lightning and ran like water in his hands. Arjuna pulled back the string and an arrow was there as soon as he did so. His eyes burned. He let the first arrow fly. It was a flash of lightning screaming across the path of the bullets headed toward him, suspending them in arcs of spasming electricity. Arjuna let fly another arrow, a spray of water that washed the bullets out of the air. Another arrow, and another, and another - all flying from his fingers, the bowstring twanging melodiously in his ears over and over again, his fingers nimble and dexterous and a thousand times faster than the bullets flying toward him, as impossible as that should have been--

"STOP!" somebody screamed. "That's the prince, _you idiots, you're shooting at the prince!_"

The bullets stopped, and so did Arjuna. The bow stopped first - it simply vanished from his hands, it stopped _being _altogether - then his thoughts stopped, shut down completely from sheer shock and exhaustion. Then his heart stopped, and his knees buckled beneath him. He swooned backwards, but somebody caught him. Arjuna looked up and saw Ashwatthama's father, holding him. Then Arjuna's eyes slid up back into his head, and he knew no more.

* * *

To be continued.


	7. Interlude: Drona

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti beta-ing this chapter! Please note that this chapter will likely be revised later; but I wanted to break the far-too-long stretch between new chapters, so here's a temporary upload. Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: DRONA

* * *

Bhisma slid the open file across the table toward Drona. "This is your real name, isn't it?" he asked.

Dronacharya always thought that his name looked odd when rendered in the alien script that these Kuru people used on their official documents. But he could not deny that it was indeed his name. "Yes," he said. "But I am never called as such. I am only Drona."

"Right," Lord Bhisma said, pulling the file back toward him. "Your wife is already in our custody," he said, "as is your son. We will harm neither of them, as long as you cooperate."

_They must have already contacted Panchala_, Drona thought. They were already running DNA tests on the blood they had drawn from his finger a few short minutes ago. There was no way for him to pretend that he was not who he was any longer. "And the prince?" Drona asked. "How is he?"

Lord Bhisma narrowed his eyes. "What interest do you have in him, anyway?"

This man thought that Drona had abducted the prince. Drona realized that it was probably useless for him to ask for a lawyer at this point. "He saved me and my son," Drona said carefully.

Lord Bhisma said nothing.

"Please," Drona said, "please tell me how he is. I wish to know."

"He's in a hospital. _His heart stopped._" Lord Bhisma flipped through the pages of Drona's file without looking at any of them. "You're lucky that he's awake and that he insists that you never harmed him. That doesn't change the fact that you seem to have gotten yourself into quite a lot of trouble already."

"I have never hurt anyone," Drona insisted, hating the sound of his own accent in his ears. "Save for those who stood against my king," he corrected himself.

"You've been at the top of Panchala's planet-wide most-wanted list for almost a decade."

"I never _killed_ anyone, not without Drupada's orders," Drona persisted. "Everything I did, I did for my son. Please. Please understand that."

"I'm sure." Bhisma flipped Drona's folder closed, stood up, and exited the room where he and Drona had been sitting.

* * *

II.

"Are you sure it's safe to leave him in there like that?" Vidura asked, pacing anxiously back and forth in front of the two-sided mirror which gave them a clear view of the room where the Panchalan fugitive was now sitting, his hands folded in his lap. "He's not even restrained. Listen, the man I talked to from Panchala said that he was dangerous, a Class-A criminal."

"If he tries anything, we gas him," Bhisma said, coldly. "Until then, just surveillance. He won't try anything as long as he knows that he can't get to his wife and son." Bhisma turned toward Sanjaya, who was standing in a corner beside Vidura, waiting to be asked to report. "So what do we know about this man?" Bhisma asked, impatiently.

"He is actually a priest, for one thing," Sanjaya said, "at least of sorts. He's apparently a member of the Ajagava order on Panchala, although he's registered with the Kuru High Council as unaffiliated. He has forged birth records from Kuru and no birth records from Panchala. In his house we found texts written in a language used by a very small percentage of the tribal people who live on the ice shelf around Panchala's southern pole. DNA tests would seem to confirm that he belongs to those tribes. They're known for being Shiva-worshippers and training their priests in the military arts. Historical evidence would seem to indicate that the Ajagava order originated from these tribes. But other than that, the people from that region tend to have very little contact with the other peoples of Panchala."

"So we could be dealing with another axe-wielding religious fanatic. Like Parashurama," Vidura mumbled, darkly. He turned worriedly toward Bhisma. "But why would he have a reason to hurt Arjuna?!"

Bhisma said nothing, but waited for Sanjaya to continue.

Sanjaya did. "He was a member of Drupada's court and close to King Drupada, personally as well as professionally. He was the king's personal advisor, and, er, bodyguard of sorts. Very high-ranked, I would assume. The unhelpful Panchalan gentleman whom I spoke to wouldn't tell me what his official job post or ranking was. But I've heard rumors before. This man, ah... There were rumors, that he was the king's _agrapani_."

Bhisma sighed through his nose. He knew that Drupada had, at one point, had an agrapani. He had never been able to determine the identity of that person, though. He wasn't exactly sure that Drupada's agrapani could be a man who had a wife and a son, though.

"But that couldn't be," Sanjaya was saying, correcting himself. "Only the asura kings could claim the right to an _agrapani._ No human king would ever be so arrogant--"

"This is Drupada, though," Vidura cut in, suddenly. "I think that he would be so arrogant."

Bhisma was suddenly reminded that there were things that he and Dhritarashtra had kept secret even from Sanjaya. The existence of Drupada's rumored agrapani was one of those things.

"Dronacharya married a Kuru diplomat stationed on Panchala," Sanjaya continued, "twenty-four years ago. The two of them had no children until thirteen years ago, when the wife gave birth to a son, who was a devakin. He's the boy that we have in custody right now. His name is Ashwatthama."

Bhisma felt sorry for the boy, really. He had been panicked and terrified during the brief time that Bhisma had seen him.

"Five years after the birth of his son," Sanjaya continued, "the man went berserk. He broke into the Council's research facilities, destroyed billions' worth of equipment, and murdered a highly respected doctor. Then he and his son and his wife vanished." Sanjaya shook his head, regretting that he had no more information to give. "That was as much as Panchala would tell us. This man has been on the top of their most-wanted list for the past seven years, largely because of the reputation of the doctor that he killed. Also, because Drupada does not take betrayal lightly."

"Does anybody?" Bhisma glanced down at the file in his hands. For the past seven years, this criminal had been using a fake identity and fake papers to live as a traveling exorcist in the city of Hastinapura. His wife had also taken a fake name, and had worked as an inventory clerk in a department store in the wealthy uptown district of Hastinapura. This Dronacharya was obviously skilled at lying and manipulation, if he could have passed himself off as a fake person in front of the High Council's inquisitors, who oversaw the employment of exorcists on Kuru.

"Are we going to hand him over to Panchala?" Vidura asked. "Drupada wants him. Badly."

Bhisma sighed. In fact, King Drupada was on the long-range comm with Dhritarashtra at the moment, and had been for hours. It was a good thing that Dhritarashtra was skilled at stalling for time. "I don't see any reason not to... save for the fact that Arjuna has been throwing a fit about it ever since he woke up." Bhisma tapped his foot impatiently, glaring at nothing in particular. So Arjuna insisted that the Panchalan fugitive and his son were both under his protection. This was only making things more complicated for Bhisma.

Without saying a word to either Sanjaya or Vidura, Bhisma strode back into the room where Drona was sitting. Arjuna was a child who could throw all of the tantrums that he wanted, but Bhisma was damned if _he _wasn't the one to have the final say on whether this man deserved protecting or not. "You realize, of course," Bhisma said, sitting down across from Drona, "that I can never trust a word that you say. You've already lied to me once this evening."

"I have not."

"You told me that you have never killed anyone without your king's permission. But Panchalan authorities tell me that you've freely murdered before."

Drona closed his eyes again and said, softly, "I never murdered anyone _human_."

"The doctor that you killed was a human."

"No, he wasn't." Drona opened his eyes and stared at Bhisma with his strange, penetrating gaze. "It is just that the rest of the universe believes he was human."

Bhisma sighed. He could predict where this was going.

"He was an asura," Drona explained, calmly, although it sounded as if he were already resigned to the fact that Bhisma was not going to believe him. "They still walk among us, the darkest of the dark. They have only fooled humans into believing that they are extinct. They can inhabit human skins and deceive us into thinking that they are of us. But they are not. They still prey upon humans and still plot against us." Drona folded and re-folded his hands in his lap. "The asuras are all around us, among us, hidden."

_Religious fanatic, _Vidura had said. And apparently, he had been right.

"I will tell you everything," Drona said. "Whether you choose to believe me or not is up to you. Although you already seem pre-determined not to believe a word of what I say."

* * *

III.

Yudhisthira buried his face in his hands and sighed. The good news this morning had been that Sahadeva's severed finger had been found and could easily be re-attached to the rest of him. The bad news had been that Arjuna had vanished without a trace. And then in the afternoon, more bad news - Arjuna found, Arjuna had a heart attack, Arjuna wasn't waking up no matter what anybody tried. Then, good news - Arjuna was awake. Then, bad news - he was insisting that the illegal immigrant whose life he had saved was under his royal protection, even though the man had turned out to be a wanted fugitive from Panchala.

And nobody seemed to be able to talk any sense into Arjuna, not even his oldest brother.

"You can stop pretending to hide from me, now," Arjuna said, stubbornly.

Yudhisthira lifted his face out of his hands. "You exhaust me, Arjuna," he said bluntly.

"I'm not trying to." Arjuna glared at his brother. He was pale and slightly sweaty and very sick-looking, especially seeing as how he was wearing a hospital gown and reclining slightly in a sterile white bed. But somehow, Arjuna still managed to exude an air of princely entitlement. Yudhisthira would not have thought, twenty-four hours ago, that his brother was even capable of appearing dignified at all, let alone _royally _dignified.

"Arjuna, we can't protect that man," Yudhisthira said, for the fifteenth time. "He's a wanted fugitive. _Drupada _wants his head. If we try to protect him, Panchala will rise to arms."

"Let them come." Arjuna raised his chin defiantly. "It would be wrong to hand Mr. Drona over to that bloodthirsty tyrant. He's innocent. The right thing to do will be to protect him. You're the one who's always going on about doing the right thing--"

"Arjuna, what part of _murderer _don't you understand?!"

"Mr. Drona is no murderer!"

"How can you even know that?!"

"Because I know!"

"You're a child who knows _nothing_!" Yudhisthira suddenly snapped.

"I'm not a child!" Arjuna crossed his arms angrily over his thin, small chest. "And don't you _dare _do anything to hurt Mr. Drona, or so help me I'll--"

"You'll what, pray tell?"

Arjuna faltered, for a moment. Then his face darkened. "I'll _hate you forever._"

Yudhisthira sighed again.

"Let me speak to Drupada," Arjuna demanded.

"I hardly think that will--"

"_Let me speak to him._"

Yudhisthira started. He had never heard Arjuna sound so _imperious _before.

And finally, Yudhisthira looked down at his hands, and nodded. "All right," he said. _And if you can't get your way, then let this be a valuable lesson for you_, he silently added.

It took some time (and some serious convincing of some highly reluctant nurses) to get Arjuna out of bed and into a wheelchair, and then back into the wheelchair when he insisted that he was well enough to walk, and then back into the wheelchair when he still insisted that he was well enough to walk, and so on until Yudhisthira and the nurses and the doctors finally gave up on the wheelchair altogether. Arjuna was allowed to put on some decent clothes, and then he marched, with his chin held high, right out of the hospital, as Yudhisthira followed behind, worrying and fretting.

Arjuna was silent during the ten minutes that it took a hoverer to transport him and Yudhisthira back to the royal palace. But his jaw was set and his shoulders straight. Yudhisthira thought that, in profile at least, he looked quite determined and confident. It was only when one saw him from the front that one realized how very drained of color Arjuna's face was.

At the palace, there were people, and there were questions. Arjuna brushed them all aside, even his own mother and her worried mumblings about "up and about after a cardiac arrest as if he had just skinned his knee," striding confidently through the crowd of the curious and the concerned who stood between him and Drupada.

Until, finally, it was Yudhisthira and Arjuna, alone in a room with their blind uncle.

Dhritarashtra wearily stood up from the seat where he had been sitting, his bones creaking as he gestured for Arjuna to take his place. The seat was surrounded by glimmering black screens, some of which flickered with static, others of which merely droned emptily. "We have no visual, or so I've been told" Dhritarashtra explained as he leaned wearily on Yudhisthira's arms. "Rimcloud interference. But audio transfer is fine."

"Indeed," said the disembodied voice of King Drupada, listening in on their conversation from across an expanse of light-years of emptiness. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, deep and gravelly, filtering out from speakers both seen and hidden all about the room.

"Thank you," Arjuna said, settling into his seat as if it were a throne. Yudhisthira led Dhritarashtra out of the room, glad that the blind king had not been able to see Arjuna's hands shaking.

* * *

IV.

The first thing that King Drupada did, as soon as Arjuna was alone in the room filled with his voice, was laugh.

"So!" he laughed, as if greatly amused. Which he was. "You're the Kuru prince who found my old friend."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Arjuna said. "And I want you to let Mr. Drona live on Kuru in peace. Him and his wife and Ashwatthama."

"If you are a prince or a man," Drupada said, gravely, "you will understand why I cannot do that."

"Yes, because you think that he betrayed you. But he didn't."

The king laughed again. It was not a nice laugh - it was a mean laugh. Arjuna could tell that the king was laughing because the king thought that Arjuna was stupid. "Oh ho! And you think that you know this man better than I do?"

"No, Your Majesty. But I know that he did not betray you."

"And how did you know that?"

"Because the storm told me so, Your Majesty. And my bow told me that I must become a follower of this man and learn his teachings. So he has to stay here, with me. I can't let you take him away and hurt him. I'm sorry."

"Well. The storm told you. Indeed."

"I'm a devakin."

"So I've heard." The king paused, then added, "My own three children are devakin as well, little Kuru prince. But none of them would ever say anything as foolish or silly as 'the storm told me so.' "

Arjuna bit his lip. He hated being made to feel foolish. He experienced that often enough in his life, and the last thing that he needed was to feel like a fool in front of King Drupada, who was the most dangerous enemy of Duryodhana and Yudhisthira and all of Kuru, really.

"This man that you would protect," Drupada's voice thundered, "is a priest of the Ajagava Order. Do you know what that is, prince?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"They are a dangerous order, little prince. They are not like the priests in your kingdom. Your priests learn ancient languages and rituals. My Ajagava priests learn how to fight for me – and how to kill for me."

Arjuna said nothing, only waited.

"And this man," Drupada rumbled on, "is my _agrapani_. Do you know what that is, prince?"

Arjuna started. "No, Your Majesty. I've never heard of--"

"Ask someone when you are older, then. But know that so long as Drona is my _agrapani_, his fate is mine to decide."

Arjuna rankled. He _really _hated being made to feel ignorant. Finally, Arjuna swallowed, and said, "Your Majesty and I both want Mr. Drona for a reason." He took a deep breath, and continued. "I want him to be my teacher. You want him for revenge. So let's... Let's negotiate."

"Negotiate?" Now King Drupada sounded _really _amused.

"I will pay you something," Arjuna said, as calmly as he could, "if you will let me keep Mr. Drona and his family under my protection."

"There is nothing," Drupada replied, his voice deep and dark, "that you could offer me to cancel the cost of my betrayed trust."

"Water-mining rights," Arjuna blurted out, before Drupada could laugh again.

And Drupada paused, thoughtfully. Arjuna's heart thumped nervously in his thin, small chest. He knew that Panchala was a dry, arid planet whose people endured constant shortages of water. Arjuna also knew that Panchala's ruling government spent a fortune every year importing water from Madras. Kuru was much closer to Panchala, of course, and covered in more water than anybody knew what to do with. But no Kuru king would ever let a Panchalan mine water from Kuru's surface. It was simply unheard of.

_Yudhisthira is going to KILL me_, Arjuna thought silently.

The speakers around Arjuna buzzed with the drone of silence. Finally Drupada's voice returned, slow and thoughtful. "You are in a position to offer me as much?"

"Yes," Arjuna answered, even though this was a lie. There were about two hundred and seven people in the royal family with the power to override his decisions, and about two hundred and six of them would rather have cut off their own hands and feet than let a Panchalan, any Panchalan, steal any of Kuru's abundant water.

"All because you want my murderous friend to become your teacher?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"You are a foolish boy, prince. You are investing yourself in a dangerous, unstable man."

"I do not think so, Your Majesty."

"Obviously not." Arjuna could hear Drupada breathing out through his nose. "So let's talk, prince. If my people and I can benefit from your idiocy, I see no reason why we ought not to."

* * *

V.

As the minutes stretched into hours and Drona still had nothing to stare at but white walls and his own hands, he began to feel some of the numbness in his brain wearing off. This was good. This meant that he was thinking again, at least. And he was thinking of his son. If Drona and his wife and Ashwatthama were sent back to Panchala, as they surely would be any moment now, it was Ashwatthama who would suffer the most. Drona had told his story to Lord Bhisma and tried to make the other man understand at least that much. But Lord Bhisma had not believed him. Nobody believed him.

Drona was glancing around now, to the left, to the right, to the mirror on the side of the room that was obviously not a mirror, at least not on both sides. Drona knew that he was being watched. Which was why he suddenly looked down at his hands again and tried very hard to look like he was _not _thinking.

He was going to save Ashwatthama, no matter what the cost. That much he had already decided. It was just a matter of figuring out a way how...

A wall on the side of the room suddenly grew a seam and split itself into an open doorway. Lord Bhisma stepped through. "Get up," he said. "This way."

Drona stood up and followed Lord Bhisma out of the white room. He was immediately surrounded by dark-suited guards. Quite a lot of them, actually, pressing close to him on all sides. But still, Drona was allowed to follow behind Lord Bhisma with his hands unbound, completely free of any restraints. Drona was grateful for this small dignity.

They walked for a long time, and then Drona heard a shout and saw his wife Kripi pushing aside another group of dark-suited guards and running toward him. They embraced and kissed without shame in front of all of the shaded eyes watching them. Drona clutched at Kripi tightly for a moment, tangling his fingers in her hair and breathing in her scent. But neither of them said a word to each other. They couldn't, not in front of these hostile strangers. Then Kripi pulled away from Drona, but continued walking beside him, holding his hand.

Drona thought about asking where he and his wife were being taken, but figured that it would be pointless to ask. He was going where he was going. He only hoped that he would be able to see Ashwatthama again, if just for a moment, before they boarded the shuttle that would ship them back to Panchala. If he could just have Ashwatthama in his line of sight, even if for only a single moment, then he would be able to do something that would give his son the chance to escape--

"Mum! Dad!"

And there was Ashwatthama, holding the hand of Prince Arjuna, both of them running forward, looking flushed and excited. Ashwatthama let go of the prince's hand and flung his arms around his father. "It's okay!" he said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, "It's okay, everything's going to be okay, we're staying here!"

"Here...?"

Kripi clutched at Drona's arm. "Ashwatthama," she said, and then stopped, because that seemed to be all that she could say.

"You're allowed to stay, provided that you make yourselves useful," Bhisma said, glaring at both Drona and his son.

"Grandpa Bhisma--!" Arjuna began, a temperamental whine in his voice, but Bhisma silenced him by holding up his hand. "Arjuna, please, let me talk to the crazy man."

"_Grandpa Bhisma--_"

"You do as I say, young man, or else I really _won't _let you go through with this."

"Yes, sir," Arjuna agreed, moodily.

"My spoiled and self-entitled grandson," Bhisma explained to Drona, as Arjuna stood beside him and bit his lip angrily, "has convinced your friend Drupada to call off the _substantial _bounty on your head. In exchange, Arjuna would like you to become his teacher."

Arjuna knelt to his knees in front of Drona's feet. "Please, sir," he said, humbly. "My bow... It nearly killed me today. I don't know or understand how to use it. But it spoke to me and it told me that you could teach me."

And the prince stayed like that, bowing low and touching the ground in front of Drona's feet, while Drona stared at him, for a moment too surprised for words. Then Drona felt a tug at his sleeve. He looked down and saw Ashwatthama, mouthing silently at him, _no other choice. _And Drona knew that this was true, so he closed his eyes and said, "Yes." Then he opened his eyes and said, "You were the one who saved me from Drupada, and the one who saved me from the bullets this morning."

"But it was my fault that--"

Drona hushed Arjuna by placing his hand on top of the boy's head. "Then I will show you my gratitude," he said. "I swear that I will make you the greatest archer Kuru has ever known."

* * *

To be continued.


	8. Chapter 04: Rose

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti beta-ing this chapter! Please note that this chapter will likely be revised later; but I wanted to break the far-too-long stretch between new chapters, so here's a temporary upload. Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR: ROSE

* * *

It was a painfully bright and sunny day, which was why Arjuna was wearing shades and a hat, his bare arms glistening with layers of sunblock, as he pulled back the string of his bow. He frowned, trying not to think about the nasty ultraviolet rays that were already baking his skin, causing his nose to turn red and peel.

"Arjuna..." Drona said, from somewhere behind him.

"Right. Um, concentrating. I'm totally concentrating." Arjuna let his arrow fly, a whistling flash of lightning that raced across the grass and landed with a sizzle right in the center of the small wooden target, hung on a tree halfway across the garden.

The small crowd of boys and girls who were watching him from behind the nearby bushes clapped and giggled. But Drona was unimpressed. "Five steps backward," he said.

Arjuna took his five steps, but then glanced at the target and frowned. "I can't _see,_" he complained. "The sun's too bright. Can't we do this later?"

"Rakshasas do not mind the sun. Though sunlight weakens them, they are still dangerous under any conditions. Will you be unable to defend yourself and your kingdom when a rakshasa comes for you in broad daylight?"

"Um... no?"

"Then we must stop our whining, mustn't we."

"I guess." Arjuna raised his bow again. He squinted through his shades, through the headache-inducing rays of sunlight pouring down around him. His bow, full of thunder and darkness, quivered in his hands. _It _had almost as much of an aversion to sunlight as Arjuna did. But Arjuna understood why Drona was working with him to change that.

Arjuna's eyesight had been improving, as if by magic (or by miracle), ever since the day, two years ago, when the bow had first appeared in his hands. Now he could _see _things, even far-away things, more sharply and more clearly than any of his brothers could, Arjuna suspected. He had long ago outgrown his corrective lenses, and his glasses. He had found that his eyesight was even sharper when he held the bow in his hands. But sunlight, painful glaring sunlight, still thwarted him. It clouded his vision, burned his skin, and made him nauseous and weak. That was why for the past several months, Drona had been relentlessly forcing Arjuna to practice outdoors on the brightest, most cloudless days. And Arjuna thought that his ability to function in sunlight was improving, albeit slowly. But then again, Arjuna was also eyeing a mole on his upper arm every night and increasingly convincing himself that it was growing and changing shape. And the last thing he needed was to develop skin cancer at fifteen years old.

But practicing outdoors did have its perks. For one thing, the girls – the daughters of the government nobles and palace staff in Hastinapura - gathered and watched him. Boys did too, of course, but Arjuna really only felt the gaze of the girls. And that felt pretty good, actually. Arjuna remembered how the girls had used to gather and giggle as they watched his brother Bhima and his cousin Duryodhana showing off their fencing in the gardens. Now both Bhima and Duryodhana were too busy running the kingdom to do as much anymore, and Arjuna was the new star attraction in the gardens. And he was good. He knew that he was good. Arjuna knew that he was _worth _watching.

And that felt good, being _good_ at something. No, not just good at something - being the _best_. Drona had taught Arjuna so well that Arjuna could now hit a target the size of a small nut from hundreds of stepclicks away. Even Grandpa Bhisma had been impressed when Arjuna had shown him that trick. And Grandpa Bhisma was almost never impressed by anything.

Arjuna let his next arrow fly. It split his first arrow, still lodged in the target, in half. Five more steps backward, and another arrow. And then another, and then another. And Drona finally said, "Good," and then Arjuna knew that he was finished for the morning.

The bow vanished from Arjuna's hands, and he sighed and stretched his arms. He walked by Drona's side back through the gardens. "How are you feeling?" Drona asked, noticing the red starting to tint the skin on Arjuna's arms.

"Mmm. Burnt again."

"But less quickly than last time. We'll build up your resistance yet."

Arjuna laughed. He had never thought that training to become a Great Warrior would involve trying to give himself a decent base tan.

For the past two years, Arjuna had done almost nothing but train with Drona. This was because everybody seemed to know and understand that Arjuna was supposed to become a Great Warrior, whatever that was supposed to mean, that Drona was the man who would help him do it. At first, it had been very hard. Drona had explained to Arjuna that his bow, his devaweapon, was a part of his heart, and always inside him. But when Arjuna had tried to bring it _outside _and into his hands, he had gotten dizzy or sick or even passed out, at first. Drona had explained to him that this was because the bow was very _big _and old and powerful, but Arjuna was very small and young and weak, and Arjuna didn't even know how to use a bow properly in the first place. At first, Gandiva had been able to practically use itself - that was how Arjuna had saved Drona and Ashwatthama from the bullets on the very first day, after all. But Drona told Arjuna that as long as Gandiva was controlling him, he would keep getting sick, and hurt, every time that he used it. That was why Arjuna needed to learn how to _use _the bow, instead of it using him. And that had been hard, but not too hard. Arjuna had learned quickly. This was because he had a _talent _for it, apparently, and to Arjuna this was a new and marvelous thing. He had never had a talent for anything, not before.

But Drona hadn't just taught Arjuna how to use the bow. Drona had also taught him how to pray, how to meditate. And Drona had whispered into his ear secret mantras, secret chants. And Drona had taught Arjuna all about what to do when faced with an asura or a rakshasa. Arjuna wasn't so sure that he even believed that asuras still existed, but Drona and his family certainly believed it, and to Arjuna, this was a powerful persuasion.

Drona and Ashwatthama and Kripi lived inside the palace now, in a spacious apartment where they had every luxury that they could have wanted. Every morning Arjuna trained with Drona, and when they were finished, he returned with Drona to his home, where they ate a meal together. Arjuna loved this part of the day - he got to see Ashwatthama, for one thing, and it was good, being treated as though he were a part of Drona's family.

Ashwatthama was waiting for them when they returned, his freckled nose buried in a book, as it always was. "You're _burnt_," he said, as he looked up and saw Arjuna.

"Thanks, I hadn't noticed."

"Well, I've heard that red was the fashionable new color this season, anyway." Ashwatthama put aside his book as he joined Arjuna on the floor of their sitting room. They always ate like this, sitting around the floor. Arjuna had thought that it was weird, at first, but eventually it had grown on him. Panchalans had lots of weird customs, Arjuna supposed, that really weren't that weird once you got used to it.

Drona was washing up somewhere else, and Kripi was with him - Arjuna could hear the two of them speaking together, over the sound of running water. Ashwatthama spooned something mushy and yellow into Arjuna's plate and said, "You wouldn't believe what was on the console this morning."

"Let me guess... Somebody calling my brother an idiot?"

"Your brother _and _your cousin."

Arjuna groaned. "Not _her _again."

"Yes. That Darpana woman."

Arjuna poked his spoon angrily into his mush. "She's awful. I wish that she would just disappear." Darpana was the figurehead of a group of anti-royal activists who had been gaining all sorts of media attention in the past few months. It didn't help things that she was pretty, charismatic, and intelligent - and a popular pundit. And all she did was criticize, criticize, criticize. She criticized Arjuna's family, she criticized Arjuna's cousins, she criticized the High Council. Arjuna wasn't exactly sure what she stood for, only that she stood against a great deal of things.

"She most certainly is not awful," Mr. Drona said, appearing with Kripi and helping her sit down across from the two boys. "She is an intelligent woman censured merely for daring to speak out against your--"

Kripi coughed. Drona closed his mouth. Arjuna was suddenly reminded that Drona and his wife had once been – and, for all he knew, were still – loyal to Panchala. And Panchalans were the enemies of the Kurus.

Drona finally turned to Arjuna and said, "You should not worry about politics. That is the job of your brothers, however much they may fail in that capacity. Now what I would like to know," he continued, turning his head toward Ashwatthama, "is what _you _were doing killing your brain cells in front of the console when you should have been studying this morning."

Ashwatthama answered this in Panchalan, but Drona laughed, the skin around his eyes crinkling, and Kripi said, "Arjuna, you must be famished. How have you been? You look burnt."

"Yeah," Arjuna said. He glanced over at the book that Ashwatthama had placed aside. The spine said something about theoretical metaphysics, Second Revised Edition. It was a thick book. Ashwatthama was studying to join an order of scholarly priests that Arjuna knew his own family's priest, Mr. Dhaumya, belonged to. Arjuna watched Drona reach over and lightly ruffle Ashwatthama's hair, and the two of them laughed again. And watching them both, Arjuna felt a brief stab of jealousy. Ashwatthama was Arjuna's best friend in the whole world, Arjuna had decided some time ago. But that did not mean that Arjuna sometimes - or rather, often - did not envy Ashwatthama.

"She was being interviewed on the NCN channel, and she wasn't even making any sense," Ashwatthama was saying around a mouthful of food. No meat on Ashwatthama's plate, Arjuna saw. Plenty of meat on the other three plates on the floor. "She was going on and on about the spending on the defense drones in the rimcloud. And last week she was complaining about how somebody wasn't spending _enough _money on the defense drones in the rimcloud."

"No, that wasn't her argument. She was criticizing the fact that too much money was being spent on defense drones that use outdated technology, rather than developing…." Kripi sighed and stopped herself when she saw the look that Arjuna was giving her. "Let's not talk about Darpana anymore," Kripi said dismissively, waving her spoon. "I'm sure that Arjuna doesn't want to hear any more about her."

"It's okay," Arjuna bluffed. "She makes me laugh."

"I agree. The reactionary hand-flapping from the royal family is comical." Drona passed Arjuna another slab of meat. "Eat. It will protect you from the sun."

"I'd like to see what medical journal said that."

"Doctors, scientists," Drona said, waving his spoon dismissively, a perfect mirror to his wife a moment earlier. "They know nothing. You should listen to priests, we know everything. This meat, it helps you grow strong."

Arjuna and Ashwatthama exchanged glances, their eyes meeting for a moment - then they both quickly looked away, both biting their lips to keep from laughing.

After the meal, Arjuna knew, he and Ashwatthama would pray and meditate together. Drona had told Arjuna that it was important to rest and meditate, especially after a morning of training with his bow. This was because the arrows that he fired, like the bow itself, were part of Arjuna's heart. And each arrow that Arjuna fired was like tearing away a piece of his own heart. But a human's heart was strong, and if it was damaged, it could heal itself. Meditating on the gods helped, Arjuna had been told, and he also understood that this was true.

But for now there was still the meal. Drona was still piling meat onto Arjuna's plate. "Laugh if you want," he sniffed. "If this prevents you from getting skin cancer, you will be thanking me later."

Arjuna boggled at the slabs of meat glistening up at him from his plate. "You know, I _did _have a heart attack already."

At this, Ashwatthama finally gave up in his struggle not to laugh. Arjuna didn't think that he was being particularly funny, but it was nice, having a friend who actually laughed at his jokes.

Life, Arjuna thought, was good.

* * *

II.

Life, Yudhisthira thought, could not have been more awful.

"I can't _believe _you!" Duryodhana was shouting at Grandpa Bhisma, his hands flailing angrily in the air. "This is the most evil thing you've ever done!" He turned to Yudhisthira. "_You _agree with me, right? Come on, give me some support here!"

Yudhisthira looked up at his cousin, then at his great-uncle-come-grandfather. "I think," he said slowly, "That this is a terrible idea."

"Which is exactly why you - both of you - need to go through with it." Bhisma folded his hands on top of his desk calmly. "Duryodhana, do I need to remind you that your father already had fifty-two sons by the time that he was your age?"

Duryodhana spluttered, angrily. "That's not a fair comparison!" He threw up his hands. "It's not my fault! I don't have time for a girlfriend!"

Yudhisthira thought silently that _he _didn't even have time to masturbate, as he had once been informed by a doctor that it was quite healthy to do. Although he wasn't about to say that in front of his Grandpa Bhisma. But that didn't change anything - he was just too busy to even think about girls. Yudhisthira knew that Duryodhana was in the same position that he was. For all of his good looks and charm, Duryodhana had never had what Yudhisthira's mother called a _significant other. _Neither had Yudhisthira.

"That's why you two are both going to _make _time," Bhisma said calmly. "You need this. Both of you."

Yudhisthira looked down at his hands, feeling panic clench in his chest. Twenty-eight years old, and he had never had a girlfriend. He had never even kissed a girl. He had never even _wanted _a girl. He had been too busy, too preoccupied, with running a kingdom, knowing that he was being watched every minute, being judged every minute, being tested and compared against his cousin--

And still no choice had been made. Both Yudhisthira and Duryodhana were effectively acting as kings now, and yet neither of them was the king, at least not officially.

It was getting quite exhausting, after all of these years.

"I don't know if you've been paying attention," Bhisma went on, a bit louder now, "but the papers are commenting, and not just the tabloids either. A king needs to have an heir, you know. Which is why a king needs a wife."

Yudhisthira listened to this, thinking that he didn't have the faintest idea what to do around a girl, how to act, how to dress, how to think--

"So I'll _get _a wife, okay, it'll happen eventually, just leave me alone!" Duryodhana fumed. "It's not going to happen if you force us to do it."

"Forcing? I'm not forcing anybody." Bhisma winked at him. It was an evil wink, Yudhisthira thought. He had seen Nakula give him that same wink, once - right before he explained about the designs for an orbital microwave deathray that he had finished that morning. "I'm throwing a gala, for your mother. You two will be there, that is all. As will every suitable woman in the kingdom. And just for the sake of novelty, we'll be doing the thing with the roses."

Yudhisthira swallowed.

"I don't care how trendy it is," Duryodhana railed. "It's a stupid and humiliating idea!"

"Oh, it was a smashing success at your prime minister's birthday gala last month." Bhisma leaned back in his seat. "It's a simple idea, really. The only rule is that you men can't ask anybody to dance. The women have the roses, and the woman has to give a rose to the man that she chooses to dance with her. It's very fashionable, right now."

"It's diabolical, that's what it is."

Bhisma laughed.

"You're evil!" Duryodhana shouted. "You're the most evil person in this family, you know that?!"

Yudhisthira squeezed his hands open and shut, open and shut, breathing deeply and quickly. Just the thought of a girl handing him a rose and asking him to dance seemed to be inducing a panic attack.

"Your mothers," Bhisma finished with an evil grin, "are both in charge of compiling the guest list. For the women attending, that is."

"ARGH!" Duryodhana tore at his hair. "You're evil evil evil evil evil evil evil, Grandpa Bhisma!"

Yudhisthira clutched at the sides of his chair, to prevent himself from falling over and cracking his skull open. Then again... The idea of smashing his head and spilling his brains all over the floor suddenly seemed quite appealing, especially when compared to the prospect of what was to come at the gala.

* * *

III.

"About time," Nakula said later that evening, looking up from his dinner. "If you would just hurry up and get married, that would save the rest of us a lot of trouble."

Yudhisthira bristled. "What is that supposed to mean?!"

"I mean that stupid rule, about how the oldest brother has to be married before the younger brothers can get any. And I _do _have a girlfriend, not that I've been able to do anything with her, no thanks to you."

"Nakula, you're eleven years old."

"I have a girlfriend, too," Sahadeva piped up. "We're going to get matching piercings."

Yudhisthira saw his mother put down her spoon and bury her head in her hands. Apparently she didn't even know where to start with that one.

"I don't have a girlfriend," Arjuna said, helpfully. "If that makes you feel any better."

Bhima opened his mouth to add something to this, but Nakula suddenly interrupted, "_Bhima _has a girlfriend, you know."

The table fell silent. This had not been known.

Bhima turned toward his brother and hissed murderously, "I'll kill you."

"You promised me weapons-grade radioactive P-rocks if I didn't tell. That was three months ago. You never got me the P-rocks. So I think it's only fair that I--"

"You have a girlfriend and you didn't tell me?!" Yudhisthira blurted out.

"Bhima," their mother said, angrily.

Bhima cowered.

"I can't believe that you agreed to give your brother P-rocks," their mother finished, angrily.

"You have a girlfriend and you didn't tell me?!" Yudhisthira exclaimed, again.

Bhima flushed and drummed his enormous fingers against the table. "She's not even on the planet anymore. So it's no big deal--"

"Yes, it is a big deal. This is wonderful news!" Yudhisthira's mother pointed at Bhima with her spoon. "But you should have told your mother, Bhima. I would have liked to have met her."

"Look, we, uh, we sort of broke up--"

"I can't believe you never told me!" Yudhisthira exclaimed again, hurt.

"It wasn't--" Bhima was flustered, upset. "Look, I didn't tell you because you would have gotten angry."

"Angry?! Why would I have gotten angry?"

"Oh, Bhima," their mother said, suddenly disappointed. "It wasn't a serving girl, was it?"

"No!" Bhima exclaimed quickly. "It was nothing like that!"

"Good, because I don't want any of my sons to end up with bastards like your cousin Yuyutsu--"

"Mother!" Yudhisthira gasped, appalled.

"I saw them," Nakula said, tapping his plate with his spoon for emphasis. "They were _kissing._ And she was all like, 'Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh you're sooooooooo big'--"

"That's it!" Bhima snarled, throwing down his spoon and reaching for Nakula's neck.

Nakula squealed and ducked beneath the table. Sahadeva tried to grab onto one of Bhima's enormous arms, but it was no use. Bhima smashed through the table and reached down for his brother, and then the servants were there, also throwing themselves into the fray and trying to restrain Bhima, and the guards were there too, and Yudhisthira took his mother's arm and gently pulled her away from the table. "I guess that's why he thought I would have gotten angry," Yudhisthira said with a sigh.

"Oh, Yudhisthira," his mother said, patting his shoulder consolingly. "I always knew that this family wouldn't be able to last more than two weeks without ruining another piece of furniture."

Yudhisthira remembered that a previous table had been destroyed by one of Nakula's science experiments not less than eight days ago. "Right," he agreed. Then he glanced around, blinking, confused. "Where did Arjuna go?"

* * *

IV.

Arjuna was about as far away from his family as he could be. Within reason, though. Guards were following him already as he tried to make his way discreetly through the palace hallways. The guards stood aside politely, however, when Arjuna took the liberty of letting himself into his cousin Duryodhana's private chambers.

Inside, Arjuna found a war room.

Duryodhana was bent over a table covered in papers, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a smokeroll dangling from the edge of his mouth, Dusshasana and Durmukha crowded at his shoulders and advising him as they pointed as this or that printed on the papers in front of them, Yuyutsu bustling around behind them, pouring and serving drinks. Duryodhana glanced up when Arjuna stepped in front of him. His intense gaze lingered for a moment, then melted into a warm smile. "Arjuna!" he exclaimed. "Good to see you."

"What're you doing?" Arjuna asked, curiously peering at the printed papers covering the table in front of Duryodhana. Arjuna realized that the papers were covered in names – women's' names.

"Mother's guest list," Durmukha said, tapping the papers with his finger, "for her birthday gala coming up. A rough draft."

"Her fault for leaving it lying around where I could find it," Dusshasana said by way of explanation.

"Aren't you supposed to be eating dinner right now?" Duryodhana suddenly asked Arjuna.

"Yeah, but..." Arjuna trailed off, not wanting to explain. That was okay, though. Duryodhana didn't need an explanation. He was good like that. So Duryodhana nodded, which meant that Arjuna was welcome to stay, and went right back to concentrating on what he had been doing. "Her," he said, jabbing his finger at a name printed on the list. "Ugh, no. She can't be there. She's off."

Yuyutsu appeared at Duryodhana's side, and scratched off the offending woman's name with a red pen.

"Have you even thought about how you're going to convince Mother to uninvite any of these girls?" Dusshasana asked, reasonably.

"Later, later," Duryodhana said dismissively, exhaling smoke and frowning down at the guest list. "The important thing is to make sure that _her _name is on here."

" 'Her'?" Arjuna asked, wriggling his way beneath one of Duryodhana's arms.

"Our future queen," Dusshasana said importantly.

"Well," Durmukha sniffed, "there's no accounting for taste, but..."

"Who?" Arjuna asked.

Duryodhana finished glaring at Durmukha, then turned his attention back to Arjuna. "Only the most beautiful and amazing women ever born in this universe."

"So... So you _do _like someone."

Duryodhana coughed around his smokeroll.

"How come you didn't tell me?" Arjuna pouted.

"He hasn't told anybody," Dusshasana said, "thought not for lack of making it obvious."

"Who?" Arjuna asked again.

"Just take a look around, Arjuna," Durmukha huffed.

Arjuna wriggled out from beneath Duryodhana's arm, and did just that.

Arjuna saw a framed and autographed picture of a red-lipped, dark-eyed women with her cheek resting on her hand hanging on one wall. He saw a flickering projected hologram of the same woman in miniature, wearing a slinky black evening dress and singing into a microphone, resting on a shelf. Arjuna saw racks full of music discs of all sizes and formats, all with the same name written on the outside of each sleeve.

Arjuna turned to Duryodhana and said, "I didn't know that you were sweet on Darpala."

Duryodhana coughed again.

"How come you aren't telling anybody?"

"Because," Dusshasana said, poking Duryodhana in the shoulder, "he's embarrassed--"

"_Shut up Dusshasana before I break your nose off--_"

"I think she's lovely," Yuyutsu said, diplomatically stepping between Dusshasana and Duryodhana, "and she's perfect for you, Your Highness. What I'd like to know, however, is why you haven't yet approached her--"

"It's complicated--"

"She won't refuse you," Yuyutsu persisted.

"I know. As if any woman ever would."

"Father will approve. She's noble-born, after all."

"I haven't--" Duryodhana suddenly threw his hands up in the air. "I just haven't had time to talk to her, okay?!"

"But you've had time to buy all of her albums and listen to her music exclusively and nonstop for the past three years," Durmukha said, frowning. "You've had time to drop whatever you're doing and get all swoony and moronic every time her face appears on the console screen."

Duryodhana seemed to shrink a bit. Arjuna had never seen him do that before. "Is it that obvious?" he asked, nervously.

"Yes," Durmukha sighed. He looked down at the guest list, one more time, and said, sadly, "I really don't see her name on here."

"Then we'll add it."

"How will we convince Mother? If you would just tell Mother the truth about this woman, you know that she would invite her in an instant."

"No!" Duryodhana said quickly, suddenly reaching out and grasping Arjuna's arm in a panic, even though it was Durmukha that he was speaking to. "You can't tell Mother!"

Durmukha rolled his eyes. "If you expect to marry this woman, Mother will have to know about it eventually..."

Duryodhana sighed, handed Yuyutsu the remains of his smokeroll to extinguish and dispose of, and wandered over to an armchair, which he sank down into wearily. "I asked you guys to help me, not to interrogate me," he mumbled grumpily.

Arjuna stood at Duryodhana's shoulder and said softly, "I think it's great, that you're in love. I don't see what's so embarrassing about it."

Duryodhana looked up at Arjuna, and Arjuna was startled to see dark bags beneath his eyes. "It's complicated," he said, slowly.

Arjuna took his cousin's hand in his. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"...I haven't been sleeping well lately."

"Dreaming of Dur-pa-la," Dusshasana sing-songed from across the room.

"Yeah," Duryodhana said with a wan smile, "that's why." But Arjuna could tell that Duryodhana wasn't telling the truth.

So Arjuna squeezed Duryodhana's hand, tight, and leaned over close and whispered to him, "If there's ever anything I can do to help you, please..."

"Thanks." Duryodhana grinned up at Arjuna and said, "You know that you're my man, right, Arjuna?"

"I know."

"And you can hang out in here anytime."

Arjuna hugged Duryodhana once, briefly, around his shoulders. This was not the first time that Duryodhana had extended his invitation to Arjuna, but Arjuna did not mind the repetition. Duryodhana's room was the safe-haven where Arjuna retreated when he wanted to be away from his brothers or his mother. Duryodhana was the one who always listened to Arjuna's problems, who always gave good advice, who was always looking out for Arjuna, the way that a real big brother should have been. It hurt Arjuna to think that now it looked and sounded as if Duryodhana was troubled by something, but there didn't seem to be anything that Arjuna could do about it, at least not at the moment.

"Good luck with Darpala," Arjuna said, and then he left Duryodhana and his brothers alone with the guest list that they were trying so desperately to revise.

* * *

V.

It was only three days before the ball when Ashwatthama asked Arjuna, "So there's nobody that you'd want to dance with?"

Arjuna was so startled by this question that he nearly fell over. But at the last moment, he inelegantly flung out his arms, wobbled a bit, and then managed to maintain his balance. This was no small feat, considering that he was standing on one leg, and had been for the past two hours.

"Nice save," Ashwatthama said.

"Thanks." Arjuna regained his serene posture, arms folded in front of his chest, one leg bent beneath him, and other straight and tall and planted firmly on the ground. Then he answered, "No."

"Really? Nobody?" Ashwatthama did not sway or tremble on his one leg as he spoke. Arjuna envied him the ease with which he finished these exercises. "Even among all those girls who are always following you around--"

"Most of those girls are servants. I'm not allowed to marry them. Some of the them are the daughters of Ministers, so they might be acceptable, I don't know. But I'm the third prince, so I'm not going to get much choice anyway. I have to marry somebody who's not higher-ranked than Yudhisthira or Bhima's wife, but who isn't too low-ranked to marry a prince. So. Like I said. Not much choice."

"Hmm... Suppose not." Ashwatthama closed his eyes, a picture of serene perfection standing immobile on one straight leg. "But I bet that the girls at the ball will be asking you to dance, anyway."

Arjuna swayed on his leg again.

"You probably don't have anything to worry about," Ashwatthama added.

"And what about you?!" Arjuna suddenly asked. The question came out a bit more snappishly than he had intended.

Ashwatthama opened his eyes again. "What about me?"

"There's nobody that you would like to dance with?"

"Oh, I can't. It's forbidden."

"It's what?" This time Arjuna did drop his other leg to the ground, his arms falling to his sides. "What do you mean, forbidden?"

Ashwatthama was giving Arjuna a _look_. "Father said to hold this pose for four hours," he said, frowning at Arjuna.

"I asked you a question!"

"And I answered. It's forbidden."

"No, I asked you _why._"

"Because I swore a vow of celibacy."

Arjuna stood, stupid and speechless. This was the first that he had heard of this. But while his throat stuttered, his thoughts raced through his brain. This didn't add up. Arjuna knew that Ashwatthama was studying to become Mr. Dhaumya's successor, but Mr. Dhaumya was married, his sect of the priesthood didn't require a vow of celibacy, and--

Wait a minute, why _wasn't _Ashwatthama studying to follow his father in the Ajagava order, anyway?

This was something that Arjuna had wondered about before, but never had the presence of mind - or the courage - to ask. But now Arjuna was more curious than he had ever been before. And so he decided to ask, starting with a question about Ashwatthama's vow at the very least. "Why would you swear something like that?" Arjuna asked. He did not have to fake any of the bafflement in his voice.

"Because it was part of my vows. I made all of my vows when I was three years old." A shadow passed across Ashwatthama's usually serene face. "Please, Arjuna. If you're not going to do this with me, then... I can't really reach a higher plane of consciousness with you standing there asking me questions."

"_What vows_?" Arjuna asked, insistently.

"My vows."

"Like what? Celibacy, and what else? You said vow_s_. Plural."

Ashwatthama sighed through his nose. Arjuna had heard his Grandpa Bhisma do the same on many occasions. "I vowed to never drink. I vowed to never eat animal flesh. I vowed never to blaspheme against the gods. I vowed never to touch a weapon. I vowed never to take another's life or to commit an act of violence against any living creature."

Arjuna stared at his friend for a long, long time. It felt as if he were somehow seeing Ashwatthama for the first time. But now that Arjuna thought about it, things were starting to fall into place. There was a reason why Arjuna had never seen Ashwatthama eat meat. There was a reason why Mr. Drona taught both his son and Arjuna how to pray and meditate, but taught only Arjuna how to use weapons. There was a reason why Ashwatthama could not become one of the Ajagava order, and was studying to become a scholarly, non-violent priest instead.

But Ashwatthama had made those vows when he was only three years old, and Arjuna did not think that a three year old would have chosen such a life for himself at that age. And Arjuna did not think that Mr. Drona would have willingly allowed his only son to essentially swear _not _to follow in his own footsteps, unless there had been a reason... A very, very good reason.

How very interesting.

Ashwatthama suddenly slammed his bent leg down on the ground and snapped open his eyes, glaring at Arjuna. "Well?" he asked. "Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to leave, or are you going to be doing what you're supposed to be doing?"

Arjuna bit his lip. He had never heard Ashwatthama snap at him - or at anybody - before. But now that Arjuna was staring Ashwatthama in the face, the questions kept whirling around his thoughts, and he was helpless to stop them. Arjuna had never asked why King Drupada wanted Mr. Drona's head served to him on a platter. Arjuna had never asked why Mr. Drona and his family had fled from Panchala nine years ago and been hiding behind fake names and fake identities when Arjuna had met them. Arjuna knew that Mr. Drona was not a murderer, but he did not know why King Drupada and the rest of the world considered him one.

"Arjuna..." Ashwatthama turned away from him.

"I'm sorry," Arjuna said. And he was sorry. "It's just that... I didn't know. I feel stupid for not having known."

"Well, I didn't tell you."

Ashwatthama's shoulders were slumped and that, more than anything, made Arjuna feel bad about how nosy he was being. Whatever had happened in Ashwatthama's past, there was probably a reason why he never brought it up, and a reason why he didn't want to be reminded of it. It was none of Arjuna's business, anyway. The important thing was that one day two years ago, the storm had told Arjuna to trust Mr. Drona and his family, and Arjuna had. They were like a family to him, now. And Arjuna did not want to lose that. He especially did not want anything to come between him and Ashwatthama. So he racked his brains, desperately, for something that he could say or do to undo the damage that he had done - some witty joke or remark that would lighten the mood or decrease the tension in the room...

Arjuna opened his mouth and blurted out, "If you can't dance with any girls, then... Then at least you have it easy, _you _won't have anything to worry about at the ball!"

Ashwatthama turned his head once, glowered at Arjuna, then stomped out of the room.

* * *

VI.

So Arjuna went to the one place where he always went when he was feeling down. He went to see Duryodhana.

The first thing that Arjuna heard, when he stepped into Duryodhana's room, was a lilting dance melody singing from the speakers scattered around the room. Then Duryodhana swept Arjuna up in his arms and began whirling him around the room. "This!" he laughed. "This will be my first dance with her!"

"So you got _her _on the guest list?" Arjuna asked, as Duryodhana whirled him around his bed, his computer desk, bookshelves stacked with unread, dust-gathering books.

"Yes, finally!" Duryodhana let go of Arjuna's hands, and dramatically flopped down into the spinning chair that he kept in front of his computer desk. "Durmukha has been pouting all morning."

"Why doesn't Durmukha like Ms. Darpala?"

"Because of her sister," Duryodhana said, wrinkling his perfect nose.

When Arjuna continued to look confused, Duryodhana rolled his eyes and said, "Don't tell me that you don't _know_, Arjuna. Darpala is Darpana's _sister_."

Arjuna swallowed. "That awful Darpana woman? Her _sister_?"

"I just said that, idiot. Everyone knew that. And, you know Durmukha... He's such a wimp most of the time, but when he holds a grudge, he really holds a grudge. He never forgave Darpana for her interview last year on NCN."

"You mean that time that she compared you to a--"

Duryodhana's face darkened, and Arjuna quickly shut his mouth. Then Duryodhana laughed and said, "You know Durmukha. He gets so protective sometimes... It's cute."

"So you like Darpala even though she's _her _sister?"

Duryodhana looked at Arjuna for a long, long time. Arjuna saw something in Duryodhana's eyes that he had never seen before - something that made a tiny, tense little shiver start to worm its way up the small of his back. "The fact that my future queen is that whores's sister makes it all _that much sweeter_," Duryodhana said, slowly, softly.

Arjuna swallowed, hearing a dry click in his own throat.

Duryodhana gave Arjuna another of his long, searching looks. Arjuna suddenly understood why Ashwatthama had wanted to leave when Arjuna had been looking at him the same way. Suddenly Duryodhana sat up in his chair and asked, "So what's up with you?"

"Nothing, I just... I just came to hang out for a little bit, but... I have to go."

"Oh. Okay." Duryodhana sounded disappointed. "You can come in any time, you know. You're always my guy, Arjuna."

"I know," Arjuna said, as he left. "Thank you," he added, perhaps too quietly for Duryodhana to hear.

* * *

VII.

"Not that one," Yudhisthira said, dismissively, sending away the servant and her armful of clothes with one wave of his hand. "Not that one, either," he said, sending off another servant. "Ugh, no, definitely not that one... This one, you stay here." Yudhisthira pulled a shirt off the top of a servant's armful of clothes, and turned toward his brothers, holding the shirt out against his chest. "Well?"

"It looks nice," Bhima commented, noncommittally.

"Although I thought that you were trying _not _to look like a homosexual," Nakula added.

Sahadeva was busy filing his own fingernails and smiling vaguely down at his hands, so he said nothing.

Yudhisthira impatiently threw the shirt down on the floor and grabbed another one from another servant. "How about this one?"

"Nice," Bhima said.

"Draws too much attention to your chin," Nakula said. Then he added, by way of explanation, "You do have a rather unattractive chin, you know."

Sahadeva began humming to himself.

"None of you are _helping_," Yudhisthira huffed. Then he looked over Nakula's shoulder and exclaimed impatiently, "Arjuna! Where have you _been_?!"

"Standing on my head. For six hours." Arjuna wobbled up next to Nakula, then leaned heavily on his brother's shoulder. "I think I was supposed to be reaching an altered state of consciousness."

"Did you?" Sahadeva asked.

"I'm really not sure." It had been three days since Arjuna's almost-fight with Ashwatthama, and Arjuna had been so relieved that Ashwatthama had apparently forgiven everything and decided to act as if nothing had ever happened, that Arjuna had been able to relax and focus enough to actually hold the standing-on-his-head position for the full assigned six hours for the first time. He had been proud of himself, and really feeling on top of the world, until he had tried to get _out _of the position and stand upright.

Yudhisthira was frowning at Arjuna. "You don't look very good."

"I'm fine--"

"I don't know about this. About any of this. This weird religion stuff that that priest is teaching you. Using your bow is one thing, but all of this standing on your head and standing on one leg and meditating until you're blue in the face--"

"Don't you have a gala to be getting ready for?" Nakula asked.

Yudhisthira turned his attention back to his wardrobe, and Arjuna squeezed Nakula's arm briefly in gratitude.

"You should already _be _ready by now," Arjuna's mother said, stepping out from amidst a cloud of servants.

Kunti's five sons all stopped breathing at once when they saw her. Then Sahadeva swallowed and said, "_Mom._"

"You look amazing," Yudhisthira breathed.

"Why thank you. And you look like you're only half-dressed." Kunti brushed a curl of her hair, studded with pearls and woven with gold threads, over her silk-covered shoulder. "Yudhisthira, am I going to have to choose an outfit for you?"

"That might not be a bad idea," Nakula said.

"I came to remind you," Kunti said, sweeping what Arjuna thought of as her _mom_ _gaze_ over her sons, "that this ball tonight is, officially, a celebration of your aunt Gandhari's birthday. So before any of you accept any roses, I want you to kiss your aunt's hand and tell her how much you love her. Even if you have to wait in line behind _all _of her sons for your turn." Then she reached out and pinched Yudhisthira's cheek and added, "And unofficially, it would make Mother very, very happy if you came home with a queen tonight." She tapped his shoulder and said, "Good luck."

Yudhisthira swallowed. "Then can you help me pick a shirt, Mommy?" he asked in a high, small voice.

* * *

VIII.

_Fourteen seconds left, _Duryodhana thought. _Thirteen. Twelve. _He was watching his parents, his mother in flowing silks with jewel-studded hair cascading over her shoulder, his father straight-backed and strong, as they danced alone across the marble tiles, the silent encircled crowd watching them with hushed awe. _Eleven. Ten. _When the song ended, then the dance floor would open up. Then the women would come, with their roses.

Duryodhana stood watching his parents, because he knew that the rest of the crowd was watching him watching his parents. But he really wanted to look away from them. He wanted to look to his right, to Yudhisthira, who was standing beside him. For once, Yudhisthira actually looked _good._ Duryodhana wanted to look at Yudhisthira, at Bhima, at Arjuna, at Dusshasana and Durmada on his left. He wanted to look at his competition. But mostly, he wanted to look at _her_. She was on the other side of the dance floor. Duryodhana had seen her earlier, her hair swept up off her neck and her shoulders bare above her long blue gown, a matching blue-dyed rose held in her hands.

Duryodhana restrained himself from bouncing back and forth eagerly on the balls of his feet. There were hundreds of girls out there on the marble tiles, but there was only one that he wanted to hold in his arms. There was only one who, three years ago, he had decided would be his queen, and whom he had been thinking about every day since. This, Duryodhana thought, was what love felt like.

He couldn't wait to hear about Darpana's reaction when she saw the image of her sister holding King Duryodhana's hand during their wedding ceremony, plastered all over the newspapers, the magazines, the media consoles--

The music stopped. His parents bowed to the crowd, which erupted in thunderous applause. Duryodhana joined in, as Yudhisthira leaned over and whispered, "Your mother looks amazing."

"I know."

"How old is she...?"

"She'll kill you if you ask her. But really, the official answer is thirty-two. She's been thirty-two for about thirty years now."

Duryodhana looked down, and saw his father kissing his mother on her lips, once, briefly - this caused more applause - then leading her away from the dance floor. The crowds parted to make way for them both, walking as surely and quickly as if neither of them were blind, and then the girls started crossing the marble tiles, heading toward the princes waiting across from them.

"Good luck," Duryodhana said.

"I think I need it," Yudhisthira breathed out, softly.

The girls came. Duryodhana didn't even recognize the first faceless no-name who gave him a rose, but he danced with her, dazzled her, then pushed her aside for the next girl. He made his rounds. The girls came at him in droves, while his brothers waited patiently for his leftovers. Duryodhana couldn't see how Yudhisthira was faring, but he assumed that it was well. Finally, after six or seven or perhaps a dozen dance partners, Duryodhana turned away the roses and picked his way through the crowd, tired of waiting for _her _to come to him.

Duryodhana nearly ran right into Arjuna, who was holding a glass of punch in one hand and glowering at the far end of the dance floor. "Look at him," Arjuna growled. "Disgusting."

Duryodhana followed Arjuna's line of sight, and saw Nakula with three girls hanging off one arm and four more girls hanging off the other, laughing as he tipsily attempted to serve himself some punch. Duryodhana noticed that all of the girls were at least twice Nakula's age. Which still made all of them a decade younger than Duryodhana. "Jealous?" Duryodhana joked, elbowing Arjuna.

"Mother will have a fit."

"Tell me that you've at least danced with somebody and haven't been moping over here the entire time."

"Um..."

"Pathetic," Duryodhana sighed, momentarily resting his elbow on Arjuna's head. Duryodhana glanced around the dance floor, searching for _her_. He saw Yudhisthira, nervously dancing with the Prime Minister's daughter; he saw Dusshasana holding a girl close and whispering into her ear, causing her to giggle and blush. And then he saw--

Duryodhana swallowed.

"Darpala's coming over here," Arjuna said, stating the obvious, and then gracefully stepping away without another word.

Duryodhana swallowed again. She was walking right up to him. She was looking _right at him. _And she was holding her blue-dyed rose in her hand.

Duryodhana met her eyes, and felt his familiar disarming smile spreading across his face. He had always had eyes only for her, and now she had eyes only for him. Good. That was going to make things easy.

Darpala stopped in front of him, her long slender fingers toying with her rose, her eyelashes fluttering over her eyes. A lock of her hair had come undone and was curling down the side of her dark, smooth neck. "Your Highness," she said, finally breaking eye contact long enough to bow in front of Duryodhana.

Duryodhana reached out and grasped her free hand, pulling her out of her bow and bringing it to his lips, kissing it gently. Darpala's skin was soft and moist and rose-scented beneath his lips. He knew that other girls were watching him, now. He knew what they were thinking. He had not kissed any of their hands.

Darpala laughed, and tried to pull her hand away from Duryodhana's grasp. For a moment, Duryodhana didn't want to let her go - the sensation of her hand twisting and turning against his, warm flesh-on-flesh contact, caused a delicious little shiver in the back of his neck, his stomach, his groin - but finally Duryodhana relaxed his fingers, and Darpala pulled her hand modestly back to her rose. "Your Highness, you flatter me."

"It's not flattery. Flattery would be insincere."

Darpala laughed again. Singers really did have the most beautiful laughs, Duryodhana thought. "Unfortunately, I've come to beg a favor of you, Your Highness."

_Being coy, are we? _Duryodhana stepped toward her, ready to put one hand on her waist and take her rose in his other hand. "And that would be...?"

Darpala handed the bloom of her rose to him. "Would you--?"

"--I'd be delighted," Duryodhana cut her off, resting his hand against the silky curve of her waist.

But Darpala laughed again, as if at some delightful joke, and gently lifted Duryodhana's hand off her waist. "I'm terribly flattered, Your Highness, but also terribly sorry... I was just hoping that..." She turned her head once, briefly, and glanced over her shoulder, toward the far end of the dance floor. "I was hoping that you would give this rose to Prince Yudhisthira, on my behalf. I've been trying all evening to get close to him, but have not had any luck." She pressed the blue rose petals into Duryodhana's stiff, unbelieving hand.

Duryodhana stared at her, his face frozen in an empty smile. "Yudh... What?"

"I know that this is forward of me," Darpala began, quickly, "but if you can find any kindness in your heart to take pity upon this poor girl, Your Highness, I was hoping that you would do this one favor for one of your humble subjects..."

And still Duryodhana stared at her, his fingers beginning to curl convulsively around the rose that she had pressed into his outstretched hand. And the smile, that pointless, meaningless smile, remained frozen on his face. Finally he looked at her, one last time, looked at her pleading eyes and trembling lips and the curl of hair brushing against the side of her neck, and he said, "Of course. Absolutely. I'd be happy to."

She smiled at him, a smile every bit as dazzling as he knew his own to be. "Thank you, Your Highness. I will always be grateful."

"Don't be," Duryodhana said, clutching the blue-dyed rose in his hand and turning away from her, crossing the dance floor without thinking about it, smiling without thinking about it, aiming straight for Yudhisthira without thinking about it.

Yudhisthira saw him coming, and gratefully broke off his dance with the Prime Minister's daughter, even though they were in the midst of a song. "Duryodhana!" he exclaimed, stumbling toward him.

Duryodhana's feet were running on autopilot, his face a smiling mask. He felt nothing. He could not let himself feel anything, not in front of all of these people, not in front of all of these eyes. "I've got something for you," Duryodhana said, holding his smashed and crumpled blue rose out to his cousin.

For a moment, Yudhisthira gave him a look that would have been comical, had Duryodhana been capable of recalling his sense of humor at that moment. But Duryodhana was at least pretending to have a sense of humor, so he laughed. "I'm not turning queer on you. This is from Darpala."

"The singer...?"

"She _really _wants to dance with you. _Really_." Duryodhana surprised himself by giving Yudhisthira an appropriately salacious wink. "Good luck."

Yudhisthira turned the rose over and over in his hands, wonderingly. Duryodhana didn't see what Yudhisthira did next, though, because that was when he turned on his heels and left.

He thought about leaving the gala altogether. He was halfway to the exit, in fact, when the next vacant-headed, faceless girl approached him with her rose. He took the rose and then her arms and sighed in resignation, whirling her around the dance floor. He wouldn't have been able to leave, anyway. His absence would have been missed, moreso than anyone else's.

Halfway through the second girl, Duryodhana risked turning his head, and saw them - Yudhisthira and Darpala - serenading across the dance floor, gazing deep into each other's eyes, looking idiotic and dopey in the way that only two people in love could manage to look idiotic and dopey.

Duryodhana turned away from them in disgust. He sometimes thought that someday, when he was king, Yudhisthira really wouldn't make a bad sidekick. Yudhisthira was intelligent, polite, and always giving off that particular eager-to-please vibe that Duryodhana usually found repulsive, unless it was him that it was directed at. Other times, however, Duryodhana would look at Yudhisthira and realize that he was nothing more than a weak-minded, cowardly, sniveling bookworm, and would want nothing more than for Yudhisthira to vanish from his sight and never have to befoul his vision ever again. Now was one of the latter moments. Yudhisthira didn't deserve to be serenading Darpala across the dance floor. Darpala didn't deserve an idiot like Yudhisthira. She deserved better. Yudhisthira was such a moron that he hadn't even realized that Duryodhana's smile had been an empty mask.

And still, Duryodhana danced with the pointless, idiotic girls who came at him without pause.

* * *

IX.

It was during his fifth dance with Darpala that Yudhisthira caught his mother's eye. She was watching him from the edge of the dance floor, and she met his eyes once, briefly, and then gave him a quick nod, and an approving smile. Yudhisthira understood. The other girls at the ball had already given up on approaching him, and with good reason. He didn't want to be with anybody but Darpala. Not now, not ever.

So a few steps and a quick whirl after his mother's official approval - Yudhisthira reveled in the sight of Darpala's gown swirling around her ankles, the way that she arched her neck and laughed when he spun her - Yudhisthira suddenly pulled her close to him, leaned over her shoulder, and whispered into her ear, "Stay with me."

"Your Highness," she said, trailing one finger along the line of his jaw, "I have no intention of letting you go tonight."

Yudhisthira gulped.

* * *

X.

The following morning came shrouded in a white, thin fog that came rolling off the ocean beneath the palace. Blue-white sky was the first thing that Yudhisthira saw when he opened his eyes and gazed out the uncurtained floor-to-ceiling window beside his bed. Yudhisthira wondered briefly who could have opened those curtains, and then he remembered who was in the room with him.

Yudhisthira rolled over, slowly, overcome by a lethargy born of equal parts spent adrenaline rush, past nervousness, sore muscles, and contentment. He could smell Darpala's scent on his bedsheets. He finished rolling over and sat up, staring at her. She was sitting on a stool in front of a mirror on the far side of his room, completely nude, frowning at her reflection in the mirror as she labored to run one of Yudhisthira's combs through her hair.

Yudhisthira watched her for a moment, watched the muscles working in her shoulder blades, her arms tensing and relaxing as she worked the comb through her hair, the profile of her bare breasts trembling as she breathed in and out, softly. Finally Yudhisthira raised his head and said, "Good morning."

She turned her head toward him, the comb still stuck in her hair. "Same to you."

"The window's open," Yudhisthira said, stating the obvious, running his eyes up and down across her naked body. He had seen this before, of course, last night. But somehow her flesh looked different in the daylight. The shadows were lying across her skin differently, Yudhisthira thought.

Darpala glanced at the uncurtained window, which overlooked the windswept cliff upon which the palace sat, and the ocean below, and said with a laugh, "There's nothing out there but fish and seaweed." She pulled the comb out of her hair, stood up, and walked over to the opposite side of the room, where floor-to-ceiling curtains concealed another tall window. Her bare feet made whispering sounds against the carpet on the floor. "Now this window," she said, her eyes gleaming as she watched Yudhisthira watching her caress the silk curtains between her fingers, "This window overlooks the city, if I remember correctly--"

"Don't you dare--"

"Has anybody ever told you that you're sexy when you're panicking?"

"...No, not really."

"Hmm. Well, it's true." She strode across the room, climbed onto the bed, and whisked the bedsheets off Yudhisthira's body before he even realized what was happening. "Very sexy," she purred, positioning herself to straddle his hips. "It helps your case when you're not wearing any clothes, though."

He rose up to meet her, reaching up to run one hand through her tangled hair, brushing his lips against one of her plump, erect nipples. He whispered her name, over and over, as he caressed her breasts with his lips. She moaned softly, then bent her head down and whispered to him, "Take me, Your Majesty. Take me like you did last night."

But Yudhisthira pulled his face away from her chest, looked up at her serenely, and said, "No."

She paused for a moment, taken aback. "What--?"

"No, not now. Not like this. I need to make it right." He pulled himself out from beneath her, slid out of the bed, and padded across the bedroom on his bare feet, stopping to kneel down and rummage through a lacquered chest that he kept in one corner of the room. Now it was Darpala's turn to sit on the bed and watch him, in his inglorious nudity, walking about the room. Yudhisthira found what he was looking for, stood up, turned, and walked back toward the bed. He watched her watching him curiously. He had one hand curled around whatever he was concealing from her, and his cock, which had been half-erect a few moments ago, seemed to have calmed down and softened out, at least for the time being.

"What is that?" Darpala asked, eyeing Yudhisthira's clenched hand. "A toy? Your Highness, I never would have thought you the type."

"Actually, no..." Yudhisthira dropped to one knee beside the bed, kneeling in front of her. "This was my father's," he said, holding out his hand to her, unfolding his fingers to reveal the ring resting in his palm. "Darpala," Yudhisthira said, breathing slowly, "Would you...?"

She stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Would you...?" Yudhisthira licked his lips, swallowed, and started again. "Would you stay with me? As my wife?"

And still, she stared at him, her face blank. Yudhisthira felt his heart clench in his chest, and his breath freeze in his throat.

And then, finally, Darpala threw back her head, and laughed. "_Marry _you?!" She doubled over, clutching her bare stomach, her chest heaving and her breasts bouncing as she laughed. "Oh, oh gods, you want me to _marry you_?!"

Yudhisthira slowly curled his fingers back around the ring in his hand. "Is that a no?" he asked, his voice trembling.

Darpala laughed for a few more long, painful moments. Then she wiped tears from her eyes, looked at Yudhisthira's face, and seemed to sober up, at least a little bit. "Yes," she said, "that would be a _no_."

"But.." Yudhisthira stood up, now no longer kneeling beneath her, but rather towering over her. "But I thought..." He fists were trembling now, perfect little vibrations exactly matched to the trembling in his voice. "I invited you to my _marriage bed _and you--"

"A bed is a bed, sweetheart. If this were a 'marriage bed' then you should have put a sign on it."

"You have to say yes," Yudhisthira pouted. "We're _already_ man and wife."

"No," Darpala said evenly, "we're not."

"Everybody saw us leave the ball together."

"One mildly good fuck," Darpala said, sliding off the bed to stand beside Yudhisthira, "does not a lifelong commitment make." She reached out and touched his face. "Your Highness," she said, "I never meant to send you the wrong message. I have dreamed about meeting you for a very, very long time. And now I have. But I never have and never will have any desire to become your queen."

"I love you," Yudhisthira blurted out, before he could stop himself.

She sighed. "You hardly know me." She pulled herself close to him, embracing him, pressing her naked body against his. The warm, enticing wetness between her legs was pressed right up against Yudhisthira's cock. But unfortunately, Yudhisthira's cock was suddenly too confused and dispirited to rally any sort of response. Probably, Yudhisthira reflected, because this embrace felt like a consoling embrace, not an erotic embrace. It felt like a goodbye. "You and I share something special," Darpala whispered into his ear, "and we always will."

Yudhisthira finally found the strength to lift his arms, to try to return her embrace. But she was already pulling away from him. She glanced from Yudhisthira's limp cock to his sad, baffled face, then said, "I think I should go." She turned and walked away from Yudhisthira, plucking her wrinkled ball gown off the back of a chair.

Yudhisthira stared at her, watching her pick up a comm unit and begin dialing to summon some servants with fresh clothes. His father's ring felt heavy and hot in his clutched hand.

Finally, Darpala finished dressing, turned, and looked at Yudhisthira one last time. Her hair was still an uncombed mess, her face blank and searching. And Yudhisthira merely returned her gaze, and said, more sorrowfully than angrily, "If I'd known that you didn't want to... Then I wouldn't have..." His voice died in his throat. He was unable to finish his words.

"I know," Darpala said. She turned away from him and finished, "That's probably why I didn't bring it up."

Those were the last words that she ever said to Yudhisthira. With that, she was gone.

* * *

XI.

It took Yudhisthira a good several hours to work up the courage to put on some clothes and leave his private chambers. But by then, it was too late. His servants knew what had happened, and they had gossiped. Word had spread. Yudhisthira walked down the hallways of the palace, followed by stares of pity and hushed whisperings wherever he went.

_I need work to do_, Yudhisthira thought, desperately, as he searched for the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, even the Undersecretary of Water Table Monitoring, somebody, _anybody _who would have a problem that they expected him to solve.

Unfortunately, Yudhisthira's mother found him first.

"Idiot son," she hissed, grabbing him by his ear and forcibly pulling him into a secluded hallway corner.

"Ow. Ow!" Yudhisthira wrenched his ear free of his mother's grasp. "Mother, I'm sorry, I thought she--"

"You've brought shame to this family." Her eyes were cold and angry. Yudhisthira had seen his mother give Nakula and Sahadeva _that look _on many occasions, but he had never felt it directed at himself before. "I warned you. I told you. You must never touch a woman before you both have been vowed together in marriage. Yudhisthira, there's only so much gossip that I can contain, and I--"

"But I really thought that she--"

"Your reputation is on the line! And in case you've forgotten, Yudhisthira, _your reputation _is what will determine whether you can become a king or not!" His mother huffed angrily, the unleashed her ultimate weapon. "Your father," she said, "would be so disappointed in you. You've done a dishonorable thing."

"Mother..." Yudhisthira bowed in front of her, supplicant. "Mother, I'm so sorry, but I thought that she-- I thought we were in love-- I gave her Papa's ring and she laughed at me!" His voice broke.

Yudhisthira's mother was quiet for a long time, then she gently placed the palm of her hand on the crown of Yudhisthira's head, and said softly, "Oh, Yudhisthira..." All of the anger was gone from her voice.

Yudhisthira straightened up, as his mother withdrew her hand. "Never again, Mother," he swore.

She looked at him, sadly. "She laughed at you?" Then Yudhisthira's mother's eyes went hard and cold again. "Whore," she whispered, under her breath. "She shall never be invited to another royal function again. Nor her family nor her children nor her children's children, either."

Yudhisthira sighed.

Kunti looked off into the distance, distracted. "How depressing," she mumbled. "Then that would make your aunt Gandhari's ball almost a complete waste."

"A waste?"

"Didn't you hear? Duryodhana left the gala completely empty-handed."

* * *

XII.

"That really takes some balls," Bhima said, lighting the end of Yudhisthira's smokeroll obligingly, "to make a one-night stand out of the king of Kuru."

"I'm not the king," Yudhisthira moaned around his smokeroll, morosely, "and she didn't have balls."

"Well," Bhima said, trying to cheer his brother up, "at least you're not a pathetic middle-aged virgin anymore."

Yudhisthira glared at Bhima, huffing out an indignant cloud of smoke. "I don't see why Mother yelled at me," he pouted, "when you were the first one to have an indiscretion."

"Yes, but nobody knows about my indiscretion. Everybody knows about your indiscretion."

Yudhisthira moaned and clutched at his hair.

"It's not so bad," Bhima said, quickly. "It couldn't have been that bad."

"It was bad." Yudhisthira blew out a pair of perfectly-shaped smoke rings. "I was _naked _when I proposed to her. And she _laughed _at me."

"All right... That is pretty bad." Bhima massaged his brother's shoulders, listening to the birds in the garden around them singing, sounding their way through the thickening fog. It was secluded in this corner of the garden, and quiet, and peaceful. But depressing : Somewhat depressing because of the fog, moreso depressing because of Yudhisthira.

"Did you see Arjuna last night?" Bhima asked, still trying to cheer up his brother. "He danced with some girls. At least three of them. I saw."

"Good for him." Yudhisthira's shoulders suddenly stiffened beneath Bhima's hands. "And Nakula...?"

"Something like three dozen."

"That's sick. He's eleven years old. Those girls must be sick."

"Eleven going on twenty, you mean. And you know how Nakula looks. How both of them look."

"Sahadeva--"

"For every one that Nakula had on his arm, Sahadeva had three."

Yudhisthira sighed.

"It was fine," Bhima said. "Mother was watching them both like a hawk. Nothing happened. Nakula didn't try anything _precocious. _And none of the girls risked taking advantage of either of them."

Yudhisthira sighed with relief, his shoulder muscles relaxing. "And you?"

"What about me?"

"I saw you dancing."

"Huh..."

"Nobody set your heart aflutter?"

"Hardly." Bhima frowned at himself, at the world, at nothing in particular. Not very many girls had wanted to dance with him last night. Most of them had looked frightened when he had tried to approach them. Bhima was used to this, though - most _people _tended to look frightened when Bhima approached them, period. But you could get used to something like that without _really _getting used to it, Bhima thought. It had hurt. Some of the girls had been pretty and had looked nice, but they had shied away from him. The ones who had given him roses had had an unpleasant, gold-digging smell about them.

"Let me guess," Yudhisthira said, finally cheering up as Bhima was beginning to feel glum, "you're still pining for that indiscretion of yours, right?"

Bhima's hands froze on Yudhisthira's shoulders.

"Ah-ha." Yudhisthira snuffed out his smokeroll by grinding it into the stone bench that he was sitting on, and tilted his head back and looked up at his brother. "Are you _ever _going to tell me who she was or what happened?"

"No," Bhima answered, honestly.

Yudhisthira's face darkened. "Bhima--"

"Please," Bhima said.

That one word - or perhaps the way that Bhima said it - was enough to silence Yudhisthira. He slumped his chin to his chest again and mumbled, "Broken heart?"

"Pretty much."

"Join the club."

The two of them sat in morose silence, the fog pressing in all around them. Bhima seemed to have lost all motivation to work on Yudhisthira's shoulders. In fact, the two of them were both so busy feeling sorry for themselves, that they almost didn't react in time when two figures stumbled through the fog and nearly fell over on top of them.

"Sorry!" Durmukha said quickly, catching his balance after nearly stepping on Yudhisthira. "I didn't see you there."

Arjuna, who was a step behind Durmukha, glanced around to the left, then to the right - but saw only white mist. "Have either of you seen Duryodhana? We've been looking for him all morning."

"No," Yudhisthira said. "Is he out here? In this fog?" Yudhisthira blinked. "I thought that Duryodhana didn't like, you know, _weather_."

"He doesn't. Listen, um..." Durmukha bent in close to Yudhisthira. "Look, he's still pretty upset over what happened last night, so if you see him, tell him we're looking for him. I wouldn't try to talk to him if I were you, though. He's pretty angry at you right now."

"What?" Yudhisthira blinked at Durmukha, baffled. Then his gaze flickered over to Arjuna. "Angry with me? Why is Duryodhana angry with me?"

Now it was Durmukha's turn to blink at Yudhisthira. "Are you really that dense?" Durmukha looked positively aghast. "That singer that you nailed last night. Duryodhana has fancied her for _years_."

"Oh," said Yudhisthira, faintly, numbly.

Bhima laughed, but Durmukha shot him an angry glare. Yudhisthira tried to meet Arjuna's eyes again, but Arjuna turned away from him, saying nothing.

"If you see Duryodhana, tell him to talk to us," Durmukha repeated. Then he left, Arjuna following him. The two of them vanished back into the fog.

Yudhisthira stood up quickly. "I have to find him," he mumbled.

"Duryodhana?" Bhima snorted. "Durmukha just told you to stay away from him. If you nailed his girl, then I would suggest staying away from him, too."

"No, no, I can't just--" Yudhisthira wrung his hands. "I'll go look for him. I have to talk to him right away. I didn't mean to-- I didn't know--"

"I think he knows you didn't know, but he's still mad at you anyway..." Bhima trailed off with a sigh, when he saw that Yudhisthira had already gone the way that Durmukha and Arjuna had gone, vanishing into the white fog.

* * *

XIII.

Yudhisthira fumbled through the fog, tripping over bushes and sculptures and stone benches as he went. He cursed as his knee banged into something particularly sharp and painful. The fog had been so thin this morning, he didn't understand how it could have thickened so quickly. But then again, Yudhisthira had never exactly had time to study weather science. That he had left to his Minister of Climatic Affairs. Yudhisthira had always been too busy studying what Grandpa Bhisma had told him to focus on, politics and economics and history, with some differential calculus thrown in on the side.

Yudhisthira's foot suddenly slipped on something slick and wet. He went sprawling.

Yudhisthira cursed again, then peered at the ground, trying to see what had tripped him up. There was a slick patch of ice on the grass beneath his feet.

But the air around him, fog or no, was _warm._

Yudhisthira struggled to his feet, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He wasn't a meteorologist, but he knew that only something unnatural could cause ice on the ground in the midst of a summer fog. Yudhisthira remembered the day nearly nine years ago when he and Duryodhana had met a yaksha in the forest, when the yaksha had frozen a stream of water for them so that they might be able to cross it safely.

But there couldn't be a yaksha or a rakshasa on the palace grounds, Yudhisthira rationalized, as he continued his way carefully through the fog. They had wards that protected the palace walls. They had blessings. They had priests. And they had Mr. Drona in residence. That man may have been mildly insane, as far as Yudhisthira was concerned, but he was at least a mildly insane person well-versed in rakshasa detection skills and anti-rakshasa protection techniques.

Yudhisthira continued his way through the garden, feeling more and more slick patches of ice sliding beneath his feet. The devakin markings on his back and neck began to tingle. This was a new sensation, something that Yudhisthira had never felt before. It felt like a warning. _There's something bad in this fog with you,_ that part of Yudhisthira that was not human whispered to him. Yudhisthira shivered. As it turned out, the part of him that was not human sounded an awful lot like the voice of the dark shadow of Death that had spoken to him once before, nine years ago, on the same day that he had met the yaksha. It was not a voice that Yudhisthira was entirely sure that he wanted to listen to.

Suddenly, Yudhisthira saw a dark shadow moving in the mist ahead of him. For a moment, Yudhisthira felt the devakin markings on his back burning hot and bright and painful against his skin. _Danger! _But then Yudhisthira drew closer to the shadow, and saw that it had a familiar shape. A very familiar shape, in fact. Yudhisthira sighed with relief, and just like that, his body seemed to relax, to unclench - and the inhuman part of himself, the part of himself that he had been trying very hard to silence for the past few moments, finally fell silent.

"Duryodhana!" Yudhisthira called out, and the shadow froze. _Ah-ha. _"Duryodhana, I'm sorry, I didn't know!" Yudhisthira blurted out, as he stepped close to his cousin.

Duryodhana paused, his back still to Yudhisthira. "Know... what?"

"That you fancied..." Yudhisthira trailed off, unable to finish his sentence. He took a deep breath, and then blurted out, "If it makes you feel any better, she's positively horrendous!"

"Oh, really?" Duryodhana turned around slowly, glaring at Yudhisthira.

"Yes! Horrendous in person and... and... horrendous in buh… buh…." Yudhisthira struggled to say _horrendous in bed_, but the words would not come out. Lying was a mortal sin, and Yudhisthira couldn't even bring himself to lie to spare Duryodhana's feelings.

But Duryodhana, fortunately or unfortunately, apparently understood what Yudhisthira was trying to say. He snorted. "Don't lie to me, Yudhisthira. Don't even try. You know that you couldn't tell a lie if your life depended on it."

"Well, all right, she was amazing in bed, but--" Yudhisthira saw Duryodhana's fist curling up and pulling back, and he quickly added, "but horrendous in person and she humiliated me and now I'm the laughingstock of this entire family and I hope that makes you feel better because it could have been YOU and not me!"

"Oh, so I should THANK you, I suppose?!"

"Yes! I mean, no, I mean--"

"Yudhisthira, I think that this is seriously the most pathetic apology anybody has ever tried to give me."

"I'm sorry," Yudhisthira said miserably, his shoulders slumping forward.

Duryodhana let out a long, slow sigh. "All right. That's okay." He walked over toward Yudhisthira, swung his arm around his cousin's shoulder, and said jovially, "As if I could stay mad at you for too long."

Yudhisthira laughed, relieved.

"Still," Duryodhana said thoughtfully, "I still can't believe that she chose you over me. I mean, why settle?"

Yudhisthira blinked, but said nothing. Had he heard that correctly?

"Someday I'll look back at this and not want to stab you anymore," Duryodhana said, all cheerful good spirits again, as he led his cousin down into the foggy gardens, in no direction in particular. Yudhisthira's devakin marking were no longer tingling, and the inhuman voice in the back of his head had been completely silenced. These were good signs. Yudhisthira walked beside Duryodhana happily, relieved that whatever ugly thing had been hanging between them had been resolved so quickly, and also relieved that whatever might or might not have been lurking in the fog with them seemed to have vanished, like the last remnants of a bad dream.

A bad dream. That was an apt metaphor, Yudhisthira thought. Because whatever it was, it had probably been his imagination.

Yudhisthira leaned his head on his cousin's shoulder as they strolled together, two kings of the world. There was no more ice beneath Yudhisthira's feet, and the fog lifted around them as they walked.

* * *

To be continued.


	9. Interlude: Shalya

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti beta-ing this chapter!

* * *

INTERLUDE: SHALYA

* * *

What he liked best about these visits, Shalya thought, was seeing the looks on their faces.

His nephews did not disappoint him this year. "Wow!" Nakula exclaimed, throwing out his arms and listening to his voice echo across the gold-and-marble-tiled hallway. "This is amazing, Uncle Shalya! It's even bigger than the last one!"

Shalya watched him, a thin and slight preteen with flaming red hair and striking golden eyes, momentarily acting like a normal human child, taking off his shoes to slide around on the slick marble tiles in his stocking feet. Sahadeva also watched him for a moment, then with a shrug, pulled off his shoes and joined his brother.

"It's nearly a sahasra-click long," Shalya said. "I had it specially designed for the journey between Madra and Kuru. Thirteen levels, self-sustaining climate control, and--"

"The engine?" Sahadeva asked, sliding around his uncle on his socks as if he were skating across an iced-over pond.

Shalya grinned to himself. _Other _children might want to hear about the athletic facilities, or the five-star chefs in the kitchen, or the video game and media console screen so big that it took up three levels of the aft portion of the ship. But _his _nephews wanted to hear the specs on the engine of the vessel. "Our Chief Engineer knows more about that than I do. But I will say that our engine has four times the normalspace fuel efficiency of the Samudra models that Kuru's still using."

Nakula whistled. "Can we see it?"

"Later," Shalya said, ushering his nephews down the marble hallway. Servants appeared out of nowhere to carry the boys' shoes for them. "Let me show you to your rooms."

Room_s, _plural. Shalya understood how much his nephews coveted each having their own room. That was something that their adopted mother would never understand. "The jump will be shorter this time, because the engine on the _Madri IV _is nearly three times as fast as what we used last year."

"Who wants a _short _jump on a ship like this?" Nakula asked, sliding along in his socks, eyeing the paintings hung on the walls around them, probably thinking about the wiring beneath them.

"This is so neat," Sahadeva marveled, for once enthralled enough to sufficiently divert his attention from whatever other world he normally inhabited. "Kuru doesn't have _any _ships like this. Not even close."

"That's why you should be proud," Shalya said fiercely, "to be Madra royalty."

"We are," Nakula said noncommittally, having paused to pry behind a picture frame.

Shalya and his servants made no move to stop Nakula. These annual trips were, after all, about Shalya's nephews, and all about Shalya's nephews - and if they wanted to break a few rules, well, then the rules were there to be broken.

Every year, Shalya made the journey from Madra to Kuru to pick up his nephews, to return them to Madra, where they rightfully belonged. To keep them for exactly one week on the planet where, had things gone differently, it would have been their destiny to one day rightfully rule. Every year, a different luxury cruiser. Every year, more amazing things to introduce his nephews to - slices of a life that they would never be able to lead on a backwater fishing planet like Kuru.

Every year, another opportunity to insult Queen Kunti and her three biological sons by not inviting them to join Nakula and Sahadeva. Not that the twins seemed to have picked up on that aspect of it, at least not yet.

But this year was different. This year was special. This year, both twins were about to turn thirteen years old - and about to become, in the eyes of the law and of society, grown men.

Shalya wanted to make certain that this year would be a visit that neither of his nephews would ever forget.

* * *

II.

"Chocolates," Shalya said as Nakula tore the wrapping paper off another box, "from King Shakuni of Gandhara."

"Thanks," Nakula said, already tearing into another one. "Where's that circuit board you promised me?"

"It's in there." Shalya folded his legs beneath him, settling on top of his nephew's bed, where the two of them were currently tearing through Nakula's traditional pile of presents. "You don't like chocolates?"

"Chocolates are for _eating_," Nakula said contemptuously. "Meanwhile, I've got a fully functional servant robot prototype without a brain."

"I'd love to see it," Shalya said. Not really, but Shalya was damned is he was going to be unsupportive of his nephew's genius the way that Kunti was.

"Good, because I brought it in our trunks." Nakula looked up at Shalya, his eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. "Sahadeva and I have this project," he began. "We're building a torso and a pair of arms that can fire a bow and an arrow the way that a human would be able to. We've been studying Arjuna every day during his practice. He gets all nervous about it, but when we're finished, it'll be great. Really amazing. Nobody's ever been able to build robotic arms like that before. Because of the hands. The hands have to be incredibly precise. The androids that we use on Kuru have only minimally functioning hands when they have hands at all. Also, the speed! We're really going to try to imitate Arjuna's speed if we can. But I don't know if we can do it. Sahadeva tried to record his shooting on video before, but even with the best equipment, all we can see are blurs where his arms should be…"

Shalya did not bother to ask what the point of building a pair of artificial arms that could fire a bow and arrow could possibly be. But instead he looked around and asked, "Where's your brother?"

"Sahadeva? He wandered off a while ago." Nakula tore into another wrapped box. "A laser cutter!" He threw his arms around his uncle and kissed his cheek. "Uncle Shalya, you are so awesome! Grandpa Bhisma took away my last one."

"I found the kitchens," Sahadeva suddenly announced, having appeared out of nowhere.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Shalya said, turning toward his other nephew. He was used to Sahadeva's constant appearances and disappearances by now.

Sahadeva's face was carefully blank. "There was a lot of food in cold storage," he said.

For a moment, Shalya's smile faltered. "What were you doing wandering around in cold storage? Sahadeva, that's dangerous--"

"I saw a lot of food. Enough for three weeks." Sahadeva blinked at his uncle. "But it only takes a few days to reach Madra from Kuru. Two days total in normalspace with a three-hour jump in between."

Shalya reached out and ruffled Sahadeva's sunset-colored hair. "I don't suppose you'd want to open your presents now, would you?"

"You better not have stuck my circuit board in Sahadeva's pile," Nakula commented around a mouthful of chocolates.

"I think that might have been what happened," Shalya laughed as he eyed the decimated pile of torn wrapping paper and open boxes piled in drifts around Nakula. "There's one more thing, though..."

"What?" Nakula stopped fiddling with his laser cutter long enough to look up at his uncle.

"A special present. Just for you."

Nakula looked around. "Where is it?"

"It's not here, not right now," Shalya said quickly. "It's a surprise." He gently pried the laser cutter out of Nakula's fingers, just as Nakula was about to finish cutting a star-shaped hole in one of the bedposts. "Come to the third-level dining hall tonight. Bring your formal wear."

"My swimsuit has smiley faces printed on it," Sahadeva commented. "They glow in the dark."

Shalya understood that this was Sahadeva's way of asking something specific, so he answered, "You can both go swimming in the mineral pool _after_ dinner."

* * *

III.

Sahadeva leaned over the observation window, watching the blue orb of Kuru receding in the darkness behind them, humming to himself tunelessly and tapping his feet. Nakula brushed a lock of Sahadeva's hair over his ear and said impatiently, "We're going to be late for dinner."

But Sahadeva grabbed Nakula's hand and waved it up and down, as the two of them still faced the window. "Wave goodbye to Mom," he admonished.

Nakula waved but replied moodily, "She can't see us, you know."

"And wave goodbye to the fishes. It's a good idea to stay on their good side."

Nakula peered at the blue mass of ocean covering Kuru's surface, and frowned. He _hated _fish. Nasty toothy dangerous animals, they were. Nakula had been told that his real grandfather (not Grandpa Bhisma, Grandpa Bhisma was his fake grandpa) had been eaten by a fish. Well, as far as Nakula was concerned, that was his own fault for sporting on a windsurfer over the deep water, anyway.

Sahadeva, still holding Nakula's arm by the wrist, turned and began walking toward the dining hall. Nakula followed, quietly. Sahadeva set a good pace. Both twins were wearing their swimming trunks beneath their formal robes, which felt deliciously subversive and fun. Nakula thought that they would never have been able to get away with that on Kuru. Uncle Dhritarashtra would have heard the swishing of the material of their swimming trunks between their legs, or Mother would have found out about it _somehow, _because mothers had a cursed sixth sense like that.

There were many adults already seated and waiting when Sahadeva led Nakula into the banquet table. Nakula vaguely remembered the names of all of the aunts and uncles and cousins who wanted to hug him and kiss him on the cheek. Which they did, until he and Sahadeva were finally allowed to sit down, one on either side of their Uncle Shalya, who sat at the head of the table, because he was a king.

"Where's my present?" Nakula asked before the first dish was even set down before him. Sahadeva was already busy folding his cloth napkin into an elaborate facsimile of a long-legged waterbird.

"After the food," Shalya answered patiently. Nakula poked at his food and noticed that everybody seemed to be watching him. The grownups all around him were eating and talking, but they were also watching him at the same time, out of the corners of their eyes. Nakula ate his food slowly, suddenly self-conscious about his own chewing.

"Aren't you excited?" some minister or official that Nakula didn't even recognize finally asked him.

Nakula swallowed the last bite of his dessert. "Excited about what?"

"To be turning thirteen. To become a legal adult."

"That's not until two weeks from now," Sahadeva answered for Nakula, as he used his finger to swirl the sauce left on his plate. "Mom is planning a big ceremony for us. We're going to get our future told. Like Arjuna did."

Nakula choked back a snorting laugh at the memory of Arjuna's coming-of-age ceremony. Until recently, Arjuna's "Great Warrior" title had been somewhat of a family joke. It was still pretty funny to Nakula, even if it was really starting to become true. It was still funny because Nakula remembered the look on Arjuna's face when the priest had said--

"You've grown up so much since I last saw you," the same man said again, interrupting Nakula's thoughts. Nakula frowned. He couldn't even remember having ever seen this man before.

"That happens to people," Sahadeva said. "They grow up."

"Which is exactly why I think," Shalya said, "that Nakula here is old enough for his present."

For a moment, Nakula cheered up at the thought of a present. But then an sudden hush fell on the table, and he felt that undercurrent of nervousness again. It wasn't just his own nervousness, either. It was everyone eating at the table, everyone in the room. Waiting for him to see his present, waiting to see if he liked it.

A servant stepped forward, and bowed in front of Nakula, holding out a gold ring resting on a pillow.

Nakula took the ring, peering at it intently. It was plain and felt _old. _It wasn't such a great present, really. Nakula didn't even like to wear rings. How was he supposed to do delicate work with a circuit board and a laser finisher when he was wearing jewelry on his hands?! But Nakula didn't want to disappoint Uncle Shalya, so he slipped the ring on his finger, turned to his uncle, and said, "Thank you."

The table seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. But Sahadeva, suddenly tense and stiff, looked to his uncle and said, almost accusingly, "That's not just a ring, is it."

"No." Uncle Shalya beamed at both of his nephews. "That ring belonged to my great-great-great grandfather. It is a family heirloom, passed down from one king to the next."

Nakula felt his dessert suddenly trying to crawl back up his throat.

"Follow me," Uncle Shalya said, rising from his seat and indicating that his nephews should do the same. "You two and I need to have a private talk."

* * *

IV.

"So. I'm listening." Nakula settled himself down imperiously upon the chair that his uncle had provided as if it were a throne. He felt a bit silly, wearing his swimming trunks beneath his robes and pretending to act like a king, but the occasion seemed to call for imperiousness. The gold ring on his finger felt hard and cold as he rested his chin on his fist, trying to appear thoughtful.

"When a king of Madra turns thirteen years old," Shalya said, settling down on a cushion below Nakula, "traditionally, the king's coming-of-age has been held at the temple of Manikaran--"

"That's in the Border System," Sahadeva protested. "It will take over a week to make the jump there."

Shalya smiled at him, patiently. "Yes. It will."

"But we told Mom that we'd be back in a few days." Sahadeva pouted. "She planned our coming-of-age ceremony. She worked really hard on it. She'll be hurt if we miss it."

"I had thought of that, Sahadeva. But the choice belongs to Nakula." Shalya turned toward the young prince, bowing his head in supplication. "You could return home to Kuru in a few day's time, and complete your coming-of-age in Hastinapura. But your future there will be uncertain. Your line may or may not inherit the throne. And even if your eldest brother is chosen for the throne over your cousin Duryodhana, even then... You will be fourth in line for the throne, living and working as one of your brother's lackeys for the rest of your life. Or you could come with me to Manikaran. Claim your rightful place as the king of Madra, and rule our kingdom as you were meant to."

"I was never aware," Nakula said coldly, "that I was _meant _to be your successor."

"You are the eldest son of my sister," Shalya said, "and I have no children of my own. Who else is there worthy for me to pass my crown to? Who else is it that carries our royal blood?"

"Sahadeva." Nakula rolled his eyes. "We're _identical._"

"But you were born first." Shalya stood up, looking down at his seated nephew. "Surely you've thought about this before."

"Honestly? No. You never told me." Nakula glared up at his uncle. "Have you talked to my brothers or Mom about this?!"

"You know that they would never let you have this. You know that they would never have let you come with me this year if they'd had any inkling of what I planned to give you." Shalya gestured, and a servant appeared out of nowhere, this time reverently carrying something silver and gold in his hands. It was a crown of twisted metalwork, delicate lattices and curving curls looping over and over and over themselves. Nakula thought it looked kind of girly, like something his cousin Dusshala would wear. Shalya took the crown, and set it down, not on top of Nakula's head, but in his hands.

"Please think about this," Shalya said. "We don't have to decide which direction to jump the ship until tomorrow afternoon." He placed his hand on Nakula's head. "Think about whom you truly owe your allegiance to. Think about the blood that flows in your veins. You could live as a servant to your not-brother for the rest of your existence. Or you could rule the world from which you came."

* * *

V.

"He is right about that," Sahadeva said, wading idly through the steaming mineral waters, drawing his own rippling patterns of waves with his hands. "If Yudhisthira gets the throne, we don't get much of anything, except a lot of responsibility to work for him. If Yudhisthira doesn't get the throne, then we don't get anything, period."

Nakula sat on the edge of the pool, his bare feet dangling in the water, watching his brother. Uncle Shalya had called Yudhisthira his _not-brother_. It was a true word, but a cold word. Legally, Nakula and Yudhisthira shared the same father. Truthfully, they had been born of different deva-fathers, and different human women. They were not brothers. They were not even related. Nakula had no memories of the human father that he was supposed to have shared with Yudhisthira. He had no memories of real mother, either. But he had plenty of memories of his _not-mother_, the one that he called Mother and Mom even though she wasn't, and most of those memories involved her yelling at him.

"Even if he's our not-brother," Sahadeva said, lowering himself into the water and effortlessly picking up on Nakula's thoughts, "He does a good enough job of acting like one."

"Always telling me what to do," Nakula sulked, kicking at the water, "always telling me what _not _to do."

"That's what big brothers are supposed to do." Sahadeva swam around idly, keeping his head bobbing above the water. "Then again, if you were a king, you would never have to listen to him again."

"And wouldn't that be something," Nakula said, turning his face upward, toward where a shielded glass plate in place of a ceiling gave a clear view of the stars spinning around them, and the gaseous mass of Kuru Six passing by the side of the ship. By tomorrow afternoon, they would be out of the Kuru System and clear to make a jump to Madra. Or to the Border System. "Wouldn't that be something," Nakula said again, "if I got to be a king and Yudhisthira didn't."

"I think Uncle Shalya would like that," Sahadeva said, pulling himself up on the edge of the pool beside Nakula with a wet thump. "Even if it's not a very nice thing to want."

Nakula sighed.

"I also think it's because of this." Sahadeva traced the markings on Nakula's bare back with his wet, wrinkled fingertip. "People are weird around devakin," Sahadeva said, conversationally. "Sometimes they're scared of us. But sometimes they like us and they want to have us around. Sometimes they like to collect us. Like how Duryodhana wants to add Arjuna to his collection of brothers. Like how the King of Kuru and the King of Panchala both have devakin children. Like how Uncle Shalya wants to be able to pass his throne on to a devakin, maybe just to say that he did, to say that he did just like Drupada and--"

"What's so great about being devakin?!" Nakula hissed. He glared up at the glass ceiling, and at the stars visible beyond it, balls of burning nuclear fire in which his deva-father might or might not exist, Nakula wasn't really sure He had always felt more comfortable with the concrete and the _real _ - metal and lasers and circuits - than he had felt around the divine and the unknowable. "Not when you have a lame Gift like ours."

"It's not a bad Gift," Sahadeva said.

Nakula grumped again. He and Sahadeva had been born of the Ashvins, twin solar gods who watched over the inhabited worlds in the universe. Their one and only Gift was that neither of them would ever have to worry about being sunburned.

"This isn't just about you," Sahadeva suddenly said. "It's about challenging Yudhisthira. And challenging Mom." Nakula turned, and saw Sahadeva peering at him intently. "I think Uncle Shalya wants _you _to challenge Yudhisthira. Someday. Or maybe Duryodhana. It depends."

Nakula swallowed.

"There have been wars between Madra and Kuru before." Sahadeva grasped Nakula's arm, fearfully. "They think that because you're a devakin you'll be able to conquer other worlds."

Nakula snorted. "I don't know how to fight a war."

"Yes, you do." Sahadeva touched the markings on the back of Nakula's neck again and said, "The part of you that isn't human knows how."

* * *

VI.

It was a false, artificial midnight on board the _Madri IV _when Nakula finally decided to leave the pool and retire to bed. He threw a robe on over his swimming trunks, and shuffled through the quiet passages of the ship, no longer feeling much like sliding around on the slick marble floors. Sahadeva had gone to bed some time before, leaving Nakula alone with his thoughts, and alone with the cold metal ring that he still wore on his right hand.

Nakula paused in front of an oil painting of the ship's namesake - his mother. He remembered this portrait from previous ships, from previous years. It was hardly the largest portrait of Madri on display within the ship, but it was the prettiest, in Nakula's opinion. His mother was sitting on a low couch, a silk shawl draped around her shoulders, her hair spilling in dark waves down her back, her eyes bright and clear despite being made of dashes of paint. Nakula thought she looked very young.

Nakula thought of his blood-family, and thought of his not-family. He thought of how his not-family was the family that he lived with every day, and how his blood-family was dead or gone or unremembered or rarely seen, close, or real.

"What do you think I should do?" Nakula asked the painting.

Nakula thought that if the painting could talk, it would tell him that once upon a time, his mother had married his father for a reason.

* * *

VII.

"We can't stay drifting out here forever," the captain said the next day, trying to appear as respectful as he could in front of the king, trying very hard not to tap his watch impatiently. "We need to make a jump. It's too dangerous to stay this close to the rimcloud for too long."

"I know," Shalya snapped impatiently. "I know!" He turned to his aides, who had clustered around him, awaiting his orders. "Find my nephews and _politely _tell them that we are all awaiting their answer."

"But we already searched--"

"Search again!"

The aides left. Shalya rubbed his forehead, and walked slowly back to his private quarters, feeling the tension knotting up between his shoulders. Why was Nakula hiding from him? Why was Nakula taking so long to make this decision, anyhow? The choice seemed clear-cut to Shalya. His nephew had everything to gain from accepting the tremendous gift that Shalya wanted to give him. He had everything to lose by refusing it.

Shalya left his ever-present bodyguards outside his quarters, stepped inside his study, and flipped on a light switch.

Nakula was sitting on a chair, Sahadeva standing beside him.

Shalya jumped when he saw them both. "I've been looking all over for you two!" he admonished them, angrily. "How did you two get in here--?!"

Sahadeva smiled blankly at his uncle, but Nakula stood up out of his chair and said, "I came to tell you that I made my decision." His golden eyes were solemn, and heavy.

Shalya said nothing, and waited.

"I don't want the ship to jump to Madra," Nakula said. "And I don't want this ship to jump to Manikaran, either. I want this ship to turn around and head back to Kuru."

Sahadeva rested on hand on Nakula's shoulder and glared up at his uncle. Shalya stood staring at them both, silent, stunned. "Nakula--" he said.

"We want to give these back to you," Sahadeva interrupted, taking his hand off Nakula's shoulder, and bending down to pick up the crown and ring, which had been sitting on the floor at his feet. He held the gifts out to his uncle. "They don't belong to us."

"Yes they do!" Shalya exclaimed, angrily. A dark shadow passed over at his face. "You two would rather remain your false brother's _pawns_ than--?!"

"I will never be a pawn," Nakula interjected, coldly, calmly. His golden eyes never flinched away from Shalya's. His voice was steady, his chin held high. "I will never be a servant or a lackey. I will never be a pawn, not to my brother, and not to anybody. Least of all to you." Nakula trembled and repeated, "_I will not be your pawn._"

Sahadeva continued to hold out the crown and ring, one in each hand. But Shalya would not touch them. So finally Nakula stepped around his uncle and headed out of the room. "Mother will be happy to see us back early," he said as he left. After a moment, Sahadeva dropped the crown and ring back to the floor, and followed his brother.

Shalya turned to watch them leave. "Nakula," he finally said.

Nakula stopped, but did not turn around to face his uncle.

"I gave those gifts to you," Shalya said, "because there is nobody else whom I want to have them." He swallowed. "You are my blood and my heart. Never my pawn."

"I know," Nakula said, still not turning around. "And this way, it will stay that way."

With that, he left, and Shalya was alone in the room, his own crown tossed at his feet.

* * *

To be continued.


	10. Chapter 05: The Contest

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti beta-ing this chapter! Please note that this chapter will likely be revised later; but I wanted to break the far-too-long stretch between new chapters, so here's a temporary upload. Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE: THE CONTEST

* * *

Duryodhana had never really bothered to notice birthdays before, either his own or anybody else's; he had a brother having a birthday almost every day of the year, after all, so a birthday was never much of anything special, unless someone insisted on making a big deal out of it. Or unless a particular birthday was particularly depressing. Duryodhana thought this was the case the morning that he woke up, realized that he was thirty years old, and still not a king.

"This is getting ridiculous," he complained, hauling himself over the edge of the swimming pool where he swam laps with Arjuna every morning. He stood up and pulled a robe around himself, much to the disappointment of the serving girls he could see watching him discreetly from the wings. "Your father was the king by the time that he was ten years old."

Arjuna treaded water at the edge of the pool, pondering this. Duryodhana thought that Arjuna looked ridiculous in his swimming goggles, but if the boy had eye problems, then the boy had eye problems. "That was because Grandpa died early," Arjuna finally pointed out.

"But I mean, come on. Don't tell me that _your _brother isn't getting impatient, either."

"If he is, he doesn't show it." Arjuna also climbed up out of the pool. Duryodhana watched him carefully, wondering to himself just when exactly Arjuna had gone from being the pale, skinny, useless little boy that he remembered to the tall, sun-darkened, well-muscled young man standing in front of him. Perhaps the influence of that crazy priest had been good for something, after all.

"Besides," Arjuna continued, also slipping a robe around his shoulders, "it kind of seems to be a good deal, having _both _of you running everything."

Duryodhana snorted. "You can't have two kings. Grandpa Bhisma should have made a choice years ago. He should make a choice now. Somebody should tell him to make a choice now." Duryodhana looked at Arjuna carefully. "You'll come with me, won't you?"

"Where?"

"To talk to Grandpa Bhisma. If he won't listen to me, then he'll listen to you."

"He doesn't listen to me--"

"He let you keep that crazy priest as your pet, didn't he?"

Arjuna's face darkened for a moment. "That's not..." Then he shook his head. "What, go now?"

"Yes, now."

"It's four in the morning. He won't even be awake yet. And..." Arjuna suddenly looked embarrassed. "There's something else I have to do this morning." He scratched the back of his neck. "Mr. Drona told me to start standing on one leg this morning--"

"So? How long do you have to do that?"

"Um, about three weeks."

Duryodhana rolled his eyes. "Arjuna, why in the five hells...?"

"Well, sometimes, if I hold the position long enough, Ican reach a higher state of consciousness."

"You're sure that you're really reaching a 'higher state of consciousness' and not just... hallucinating?"

"Pretty sure," said Arjuna. "And then I can enter a higher plane of existence and become one with the universe. Supposedly."

"And how's that going for you?"

"Um..."

"Listen, that's priest stuff. You're a _prince. _You can't spend all of your time standing on one leg and becoming one with the universe. Besides, you don't need to understand the fundamental truths of the Gods or anything like that." Duryodhana waved his hand dismissively. "You're a prince, you can have your own priest to do that for you."

"But maybe I want to--!" Arjuna suddenly burst out, then abruptly bit his lip, as if ashamed of his outburst.

"Want to what?" Duryodhana asked, his arms crossed impatiently across his chest.

But Arjuna looked away from him, unable to answer. "I thought so," Duryodhana huffed, and turned and strode away, wet feet slapping the tiles beneath him as he went.

Duryodhana endured his attendants dressing and cleaning him, then wandered off to find Grandpa Bhisma. Perhaps sensing the mood he was in, nobody within the palace bothered to accost him with any official business. At one point, Duryodhana paused in front of a hanging mirror and admired himself for a moment - just a moment. Thirty years old, still heartbreakingly handsome, still unwed, still not a king. Not bothering to hide the few gray hairs that had begun to speckle his locks. Also not bothering to hide the dark circles under his eyes, either. Those resulted from a lack of a sleep - and Duryodhana could easily blame that on the stress of his job. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was often woken in the middle of the night by whispering voices around his ears, speaking in a language he could not recognize, belonging to speakers he could not see.

Duryodhana shook his head and moved on. By this time his bodyguards were following him. He duly ignored them. Down another hallway, around a corner, and Duryodhana paused when he saw someone bent over and furiously polishing a golden railing trailing off the end of a staircase.

"Yuyutsu?" Duryodhana sounded aghast.

Yuyutsu looked up, a smudge of polish on his cheek. "Your Highness," he mumbled, falling into an embarrassed bow.

"Get up," Duryodhana said testily, reaching over to slap the polishing rag out of Yuyutsu's hand, "and _stop that_. What do you think you're doing?!"

Yuyutsu looked from the railing to Duryodhana and back to the railing again. "It needed to be done, and nobody else would do it," he said simply, not looking Duryodhana in the eyes.

"This is ridiculous. You're my _brother_. I can't believe that Father would let you--" Duryodhana gestured sharply. "Follow me. You and I both have something to talk to Grandpa Bhisma about."

Yuyutsu hurried to rub the polish off his cheek. "Your Highness, I only have half an hour before breakfast service begins--"

Duryodhana's step faltered for a moment, as he remembered how Yuyutsu had been bringing him and Dusshasana their breakfast during their morning debriefings every day for the past two years. "You can skip that today," Duryodhana finally declared, haughtily. "I want to have you with me."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Duryodhana took two more steps, then turned and glared at the bodyguard closest to him. "And I want you to go away," he hissed.

The bodyguards began floating away from him. Duryodhana was within the inner heart of the palace now, and knew that he was safe, even without his entourage of guards. Yuyutsu followed him dutifully, until Duryodhana slowed down and paused, two doors away from his destination. He glanced around - the hallway around him was empty of bodyguards or servants. He was alone, save for Yuyutsu. But he could hear voices coming from nearby.

"Your Highness...?" Yuyutsu whispered.

Duryodhana held a finger up to his lips. "You and I are going to talk to Grandpa Bhisma," he said, although he began tiptoeing forward, toward the closed door of his grandfather's study, in a manner which indicated that he had absolutely no intention of betraying his presence until he was ready. Yuyutsu followed suit, quietly following his brother.

Duryodhana pressed his ear against the door of the study, listening for the voices within. "Mustn't interrupt until the right moment," he mumbled quietly, when he sensed Yuyutsu shooting him a curious look from behind his back. So Duryodhana breathed quietly, and listened. The door beneath his ear was blocking out most sound, but with a whispered prayer and a twist of the ice inside of him, Duryodhana found that he could easily hear _through _the door as if it were not even there at all. This was another useful trick that he had perfected during his many long, sleepless nights.

And what Duryodhana heard was his Grandpa Bhisma, sounding angry. "Years ago," Bhisma said, his voice impatient, "I did my part years ago! It's high time you stopped delaying--"

"And I still insist," Duryodhana's father said calmly, "that your decision may have been premature."

Duryodhana's breath caught in his throat. He had not expected his father to be with Grandpa Bhisma. He also recognized the tone of voice that his father was using - that calm, stubborn, unmoving tone of voice that he only used when he had his heart completely set on one thing and would not be persuaded away from it by anything or anyone.

"You made a promise to your brother," Bhisma retorted, "and Pandu trusted you to protect that promise, even after he was gone. The decision was left to me and the High Council. We have decided. Now if you would just do your part and carry out your duty as a king--"

"Correct. I am the king. And you have no right to ask me to do this - not to my son."

"You can't keep delaying this forever," Bhisma hissed, sounding like an angry snake. "Yudhisthira--"

"Yudhisthira has many weaknesses unbefitting a ruler."

"As does Duryodhana!" Bhisma snapped. "The High Council and I know these things! We debated and we deliberated, and _we made the decision that Yudhisthira will be the next king._"

Duryodhana sank down to his knees, his legs turning to pudding. His hands flopped down into the soft carpet beneath him. Something in his brain snapped, blanked - something refused to process. _What?_ he thought, numbly. _What?! WHAT?!_

Duryodhana heard his father start to say something else, but Yuyutsu suddenly tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, in a strange, strangled voice, "Your Highness!"

Duryodhana looked down and saw the curls of ice radiating out from his hands, meandering their way across the carpet up and down the hallway.

Duryodhana looked up at Yuyutsu, who was slowly backing away from him, his normally dark face curiously drained of color, his eyes large and wet. "You..." Duryodhana croaked. "You saw..."

"No, no!" Yuyutsu shook his head. "I didn't see anything - I didn't hear anything!" He took another step backward, trembling. "I didn't...!"

But then Duryodhana looked down, and saw the icy footprints that Yuyutsu was leaving on the carpet in front of him. "I can't control it either!" Yuyutsu moaned, clutching his face with his hands.

Duryodhana stood up quickly, grabbing Yuyutsu's cold hand in his. "Come on," he whispered, quickly, urgently. "We have to get out of here before they hear us." _Before they see us,_ Duryodhana added, as he dragged Yuyutsu down the hallway. Duryodhana wished that the ice they had left on the carpet would just vanish, and a moment later, a glance over his shoulder told him that it had.

* * *

II.

Arjuna found that it was hard to concentrate on the sound of his own breathing, when he had so many other things to think about. The pain in his one standing leg, for one thing. His conversation with Duryodhana that morning, for another.

Drona, who was sitting next to Arjuna, folded up his newspaper and glanced up at his standing charge. "You're wobbling," he pointed out.

"I'm thinking," Arjuna admitted.

"An entirely foolish enterprise." Drona stood up briskly. The two of them were in a deliberately empty room behind the quarters where Drona's family lived, where Arjuna was often left for days and weeks to practice his yogic skills.

Arjuna sighed. It was his brother's birthday and he hadn't been able to see Yudhisthira that morning. Ashwatthama hadn't been around for weeks, busy shadowing Mr. Dhaumya on his daily errands. And Duryodhana thought that Arjuna was wasting his time trying to achieve a higher state of consciousness, and Arjuna was halfway beginning to believe that he was right--

"Mm?" Drona was suddenly standing alert, his ears pricked, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. He slowly set down his newspaper, and his hand began sliding inside his coat, where Arjuna knew he kept a small Ayoguda-class firearm.

Arjuna set down his other leg. "What is it?" he whispered.

"Something that should not be here." Drona pulled out his gun and slowly began edging toward one of the bare walls of the room. "Asura. Or rakshasa. Or perhaps an assassin come for you." Drona lowered the firearm and aimed. "One must always be vigilant, even within the walls of one's own home."

Arjuna listened to the skittering, scratching sounds coming from behind the wall. He suddenly thought that it would be nice if it really were an asura back there, just so that he could finally _see _one and stop having all of these nagging doubts about whether his teacher really was insane or not.

"Get behind me," Drona hissed. "_And draw your bow._"

Arjuna knelt behind his teacher, Gandiva coming alive in his hands - a taught and deadly weapon of woven thunder and lightning. Arjuna drew an arrow and aimed at the sounds behind the wall. Then he held himself at ready, waiting. Mr. Drona did, too. They were waiting for whatever it was to make the first move.

And it did.

_There! _Arjuna thought, and the arrow flew from his bow and pierced the small gray thing that came bursting out of a crack where the wall meet the floor. There was an explosion of crackling electricity and flying raindrops when the arrow hit its target.

Drona pulled back his firearm. "A drone?" he asked, stepping toward whatever-it-was, now impaled by Arjuna's arrow. "Did somebody send an assassin drone after you?"

"No," Arjuna said, reaching down to pick up his own arrow and the tiny metal ball, sparking and sputtering and shivering, pierced on the end of it. "My little brothers made this thing last week. Nakula said that it was a toy for Sama's cat." He laughed. "I think it was probably trying to get away from the cat. Maybe it got lost."

Drona held out his hand, and Arjuna handed over the arrow to him. Drona held it up carefully, turning it over and over in his hands, peering at the small machine slowly dying on the end of the arrow. "This thing is agile," he said, "and intelligent." He pressed a button on the bottom of the machine, and a half-hearted splutter of laser-fire fizzled out toward the wall. Drona looked up at Arjuna, raising one eyebrow. "Your brother gave this cat toy a laser?"

"Yeah, that... That does sound like something Nakula would do."

Drona looked down at the cat toy again, then back up at Arjuna. "I would like to speak with your brother," he said, in his heavy Panchalan accent.

Arjuna blinked up at him. "Why?"

"Because I have an interesting idea."

Arjuna suddenly felt as if he were being left out of some sort of joke. "I thought you said thinking was a foolish enterprise," he pointed out, petulantly.

"For those who are not priests, yes." Drona turned away from his student, striding out of the room.

* * *

III.

The two of them were alone in Duryodhana's private quarters when Duryodhana threw a stunned and trembling Yuyutsu down on his bed, standing over him and glowering, "How long?!"

"As long as I can remember," Yuyutsu gasped, red-eyed and watery-voiced. "Ice and fire and everything else, too. It comes out of me, sometimes, when I'm scared or when I'm sick."

Duryodhana listened to this, his brain racing in a dozen different directions at once. _Grandpa Bhisma decided years ago. Father refused to tell anyone. He still refuses. Yudhisthira. YUDHISTHIRA! How in the hell could anybody ever choose--?!_

"They talk to me at night, too," Yuyutsu moaned.

"Who?!" Duryodhana demanded, his attention suddenly snapping back to Yuyutsu.

"The asuras." Yuyutsu looked up at Duryodhana, his eyes pleading. "They're not just inside my head, are they? You can hear them too? _I'm not crazy, am I_?!"

"There's no such thing as asuras," Duryodhana insisted. "Not anymore." _Father won't let this happen. He won't let anyone take my throne away from me. But Grandpa Bhisma, how could he--?!_

Yuyutsu was standing up slowly, shaking his head. "No, they're real. They come to me at night. They taught me how to speak their language."

Duryodhana breathed in and out, slowly. "No, Yuyutsu. That's crazy. You and I don't hear voices at night. Whatever we have, it didn't come from asuras - this is a gift from the Gods--"

"Are there more like us?" Yuyutsu asked. "If I'm not the only one, and if you're not the only one, then--"

"None of my brothers have this," Duryodhana said, reaching out to touch Yuyutsu's hand. Ice crackled between their fingertips. "I know. Because none of them can keep a secret from me."

"I practice at night," Yuyutsu said, beginning to calm down a bit. "When Mother is asleep, that's when the asuras come to me. I was afraid of them at first, but then I learned to listen to them. Their language is beautiful. They taught me how to use my maya."

_"It's not maya. _It can't be. Only asuras can use maya." Duryodhana gripped Yuyutsu by the shoulders, suddenly panicked. "You and I are humans!" he insisted. Then he abruptly let go of Yuyutsu, causing him to stumble backward. "It's a gift from the Gods," Duryodhana mumbled, pacing back and forth. "It's a gift to Father's line. It's a sign. You and I, Yuyutsu--" Duryodhana turned to his brother, his eyes wild, blazing with the frightening inner fire of conviction. "We will be kings, Yuyutsu. We were meant to be. When I am the king, I will give you half the kingdom. You won't have to be a servant anymore!"

"But--"

"We don't have much time." Duryodhana gripped Yuyutsu's shoulders again. "Yudhisthira will get the throne if we don't do something. You heard what they said back there."

Yuyutsu looked up at his brother, his mouth opening and closing, struggling to say something.

"But nobody can know!" Duryodhana suddenly shouted, shaking Yuyutsu angrily. "If anybody knew about what we could do, it would be the end of us! The High Council would destroy us--"

"Perhaps we are asuras," Yuyutsu said, slowly. "Perhaps we should be destroyed--"

"No!" Duryodhana shook his head vigorously. "Don't ever say that! You and I, Yuyutsu - we're human - we're kings - we're the good guys. Even if our gift did come from asuras--" Duryodhana gripped Yuyutsu's hands in his own. "You and I will use it for good. You and I can use this thing for Kuru's sake."

* * *

IV.

It was late in the day on Yudhisthira's otherwise unspectacular birthday. He had been sitting through a meeting with his Prime Ministers for four hours, and his eyes were constantly in danger of glazing over or even worse, closing, when Sanjaya appeared out of nowhere, tapped him on the shoulder, and mouthed, "Dinner. Now."

Yudhisthira had never been more grateful to be interrupted in the midst of something important for something as trivial as food.

But Yudhisthira was more than a little surprised when Sanjaya led him down into the formal dining hall, where all of his cousins and brothers were milling and slowly taking their seats, dressed in their evening best. "What's going on tonight?" Yudhisthira asked as he took a seat beside his mother.

"Your uncle has an announcement to make," Yudhisthira's mother said, glancing sideways at Arjuna, who was attempting to stop Sahadeva from building an elaborate tower with his twenty pieces of silverware, "but not _the _announcement, or so I've heard. Something else, rather."

Yudhisthira began looking around the table, searching for Duryodhana. He really ought to wish Duryodhana a merry birthday, Yudhisthira thought. Then he spotted Duryodhana standing toward the opposite head of the long table, leaning over and whispering urgently into Yuyutsu's ear. Yudhisthira pushed back his seat and stood up, heading toward them. He thought that surely their conversation would be finished by the time Yudhisthira reached them. But as Yudhisthira drew closer to the both of them, he began to notice how drained of color Yuyutsu looked, how drawn and pinched. Yuyutsu was listening intently to Duryodhana and nodding occasionally, but he looked fearful, and worried.

Suddenly Yuyutsu's eyes flickered toward Yudhisthira, he opened his mouth and said something, and Duryodhana abruptly drew away from him. Duryodhana headed toward his cousin, smiling warmly. "One more year!" he said, embracing Yudhisthira's shoulders. "Now, I won't make any old age jokes if you won't."

"Hardly." Yudhisthira kissed his cousin's cheek. "Do you have any idea what's going on tonight?"

"Not a clue, save for the fact that it will be unimportant." Duryodhana pulled his arms away from Yudhisthira. "Father seems to have something harmless up his sleeve. I hope it's not another gala. Maybe he'll be taking us all to that resort in Agna. Something nice."

Yudhisthira opened his mouth to say something else, but Duryodhana suddenly turned his head and glanced over his shoulder, where Yuyutsu was still hovering, unsure and nervous. "You have to go," Duryodhana said, authoritatively, but not unkindly. "My mother will be here soon - you can't stay here. Tonight, remember?"

"Tonight," Yuyutsu mumbled, and vanished.

"That Yuyutsu," Duryodhana laughed, clapping Yudhisthira on his shoulder. "You know how Mother gets around him. Not a good idea to have them sitting at the same banquet table together."

Yudhisthira did not think that this was very funny, but he did not say as much. He left Duryodhana and returned to his seat, between Bhima and his mother, across from Arjuna and Nakula and Sahadeva.

"Wouldn't you like to know," Nakula was saying, waving one finger smugly in front of Arjuna's face. "Mr. Drona and I have all of the details worked out already."

"About what?!" Arjuna fumed.

"Hmmmm, that's a secret."

"You can't keep secrets from your brother!"

"Yes I can!" Nakula stuck out his tongue.

"Nakula!" Yudhisthira's mother was shocked. "Is that... When did you do that?!"

"Thith?" Nakula pointed at the metal stud embedded in his tongue. "Last week."

"Sahadeva!" Yudhisthira's mother admonished, pre-emptively.

"No, Mother," Sahadeva said, shaking his head. "I didn't pierce my tongue."

But she was not fooled. "Then what else did you get pierced?"

"I can't show you at the dinner table."

By this time, Bhima was pouring his mother a drink and mouthing, "His girlfriend will make him take it out."

"One can only hope."

Yudhisthira tried to hold his glass out to Bhima to receive his drink, but Bhima pulled back the pitcher of wine he was holding and said, "No."

"What do you mean, no?!"

"I mean _no_ because I was with you last night, I saw how much you drank, and I feel like I owe a favor to your liver."

"_Bhima,_" Yudhisthira hissed.

"He's right," Yudhisthira's mother said, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Drinking and smoking, what's next? Gambling?"

"Oh, that's sinful," Arjuna proclaimed from across the table. "Gambling, that is."

Yudhisthira glowered at his brother. The last thing he needed was Arjuna to start spouting off all of the strange religious dogma that he was absorbing from that crazy Panchalan priest. But mostly, Yudhisthira glowered because he was angry at himself, and grateful that neither Arjuna nor his mother knew about all of the gold and jewelry he had lost in a game of cards with Dusshasana the previous week.

"You must be under a lot of stress," Yudhisthira's mother said, softly.

Yudhisthira felt at least a little mollified by this. "Yes," he said, content to let that explain everything.

"Your father used to deal with stress in more constructive ways," Yudhisthira's mother went on. "For one thing, he would go hunting. For another thing, he had two wives." She gave Yudhisthira a pointed look. "You need a woman."

Yudhisthira groaned. Not this again.

"One that you _marry _this time," Yudhisthira's mother added.

Yudhisthira buried his face in his hands, which was his normal reaction when the world around him suddenly became too embarrassing to bear. Yudhisthira sensed that his mother was about to say something else, but fortunately, at that moment, the table fell quiet, a last few stragglers scrambled to their seats, and Dhritarashtra began speaking.

Yudhisthira partially tuned out his uncle as he spoke at some length about something or other, and then Mr. Dhaumya offered a sacrifice and said a prayer before the meal. Yudhisthira's thoughts focused instinctively, however, when the blind king said the words _special announcement._ Then he looked expectantly at Drona, whom Yudhisthira had not even been aware had been invited to the table.

Drona stood up and said, "In one month's time, Hastinapura will be host to the first inter-planetary martial championship held in the last two hundred years."

The table fell silent. And all eyes tried, at once, to discreetly glance at Arjuna, whose sun-darkened face suddenly somehow managed to flush scarlet. From nearly the opposite end of the table, Duryodhana caught Arjuna's eye and gave him an encouraging wink. Arjuna looked as if he would have gladly vanished from the face of the planet at that very moment. Yudhisthira could sympathize with the feeling.

"All of the great warriors and expert marksmen from Kuru's neighboring planets will be invited," Drona went on grandiosely, "to compete in contests of skills, including wrestling, fencing, archery, riflery, and races on foot and in water." He seemed to be the only one at the table pointedly _not _looking at Arjuna. "Although I have no doubt," he added, simply and without any flattery, "that the princes of Kuru will undoubtedly be crowned champions in any event they choose to enter."

Drona sat down, and the table erupted in an uproar. Yudhisthira could hear Duryodhana and his brothers already chattering about who would enter in what competitions. But Arjuna turned to Nakula and angrily demanded, "How did you know about this?!"

Nakula took a sip of his wine, nonchalantly. "The archers and marksmen are going to need targets. Moving targets. Intelligent targets. Possibly equipped with microwave lasers, although Mr. Drona wasn't too keen on that idea."

"This is wonderful," Yudhisthira forced himself to say, looking Arjuna squarely in the eye. "Now royalty from all the nearest planets will see you crowned champion of the archery competition."

Arjuna's cheeks flushed even redder.

"And it will be good for us, too," Yudhisthira rambled on, in the way that he was prone to ramble when he was trying to placate someone but aware that he was doing a poor job of it, "hosting something like this. Hastinapura will be shown off before the entire galaxy. _Panchalans_ might even be there, can you believe that?"

Bhima snorted, at the idea of Panchalans in general.

"Will you compete?" Yudhisthira asked, suddenly turning to Bhima. "With your sword, that is."

"Only if Duryodhana also enters," Bhima said, with a small and not entirely pleasant smile on his lips.

* * *

V.

It was hours after dinner, and Duryodhana was alone in his private study, when Arjuna suddenly stomped angrily out of nowhere and right up to him. "At dinner," he railed, "everybody was staring at me, and everybody was _talking about me _even if they were pretending like they weren't!" Duryodhana was startled by Arjuna, and nearly dropped the glass of wine he had been nursing. Arjuna seemed not to notice. "I'm tired of not being in on the joke!" he snarled. "I'm tired of _being_ a joke!"

Duryodhana sighed, impatiently. He had had just about enough of Arjuna coming to him with every little whine and complaint. "Arjuna, I don't know if you were too dense to notice this, but tonight you were about as far from a joke as a person could be. You were the toast of the dinner."

"Why?!"

"Isn't it obvious?" Duryodhana offered Arjuna a seat, but the young prince remained standing, fuming. "You're our Great Warrior. I've seen you break planetary records just practicing with your bow in the back gardens. Drona wants to show you off. And take some of the credit, of course. Plus it will be to our dynasty's credit if any of the guests at all feel impressed or even intimidated by you--"

"But this isn't just about me! Mr. Drona said that there would be more than just archery --"

"Oh, come off it, Arjuna. Of course this is about you. Do you think that Mr. Drona cares about any of the other events? They're just being included for tradition's sake. We all know that the real reason for all of this is so that you can show your skill with Gandiva to the rest of the universe."

Arjuna finally sat down, heavily. "He didn't ask me if I wanted to do that," Arjuna said, softly.

"Then he's giving you a gift." Duryodhana poured Arjuna a glass of wine, which Arjuna took but held limply in his hand. "Have you ever thought," Duryodhana said carefully, "that maybe you deserve to have a moment in the sun?"

Arjuna looked up sharply. "Pride is a sin," he said.

Duryodhana snorted. "Please."

"It is," Arjuna insisted, petulantly, childishly.

"All right, then. If you refuse to enjoy it, then this will be Mr. Drona's moment in the sun, at least."

Arjuna was silent for a long moment, starting at his reflection in the wine glass in his hand. "No," he finally said, softly. "Mr. Drona would never use me like that."

"Oh, please," Duryodhana said again.

Arjuna stood up angrily, sloshing his wine on his shirt, not even noticing. "Mr. Drona loves me," he said.

"That's likely true, but that doesn't mean that he would never use you. Everyone's a user, Arjuna. You're a prince, you should know that better than anyone." Duryodhana poured himself some more wine. "Because of you, Mr. Drona can live a life of luxury inside a royal palace, instead of the miserable life of an impoverished fugitive. Because of you, Mr. Drona's son is positioned to step right into the plushest and most stable position that a priest could possibly hold on Kuru. Because of you winning this upcoming archery contest, Mr. Drona will finally be able to publicly and conspicuously receive all of the glory and recognition that he thinks he - and he probably does, honestly - deserve. And it will all be done in front of Drupada, too. Don't think that Drupada and his children won't be there. You'll win against them in anything that they try, though. Don't think that you won't."

Arjuna stood staring at Duryodhana, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

"And it's not as if you've never used Mr. Drona," Duryodhana went on, waving his hand dismissively at Arjuna's shock. "If I remember correctly, you _bought _that man from Drupada. You wanted him to teach you and bring you glory. You wanted him to help you fulfill that silly Great Warrior prophecy. And now he has, so I don't understand where you think that you have the right to complain about it." Duryodhana frowned at his cousin. "If you would just _get over yourself_, maybe you might actually enjoy this entire contest that's being arranged almost entirely for your benefit, anyway."

That was when Arjuna turned and angrily stomped out of the room, without saying another word.

Duryodhana was not unrelieved to see him go. Not only had he had enough of Arjuna's existential whining to last a lifetime, but he was expecting Yuyutsu to show up at any moment, and he didn't want anyone around to see what the two of them were going to do next.

* * *

VI.

"It will be here, on the thirty-first day of the month," Nakula said, leaning over Yudhisthira's shoulder and pointing at the corresponding square on Yudhisthira's desktop calendar helpfully. "That gives Sahadeva and I enough time to build the drones for the archery targets."

For a moment, just a moment, Yudhisthira relished the feeling of his younger brother leaning over his shoulder, resting his weight on a hand he had placed on the back of Yudhisthira's neck. It was rare for Nakula to spend more than a few moments in Yudhisthira's presence without saying something calculated to raise his blood pressure, and it was rarer even still for there to be any sort of physical contact between them. Yudhisthira could not remember a time when Nakula had ever let himself be held or touched, at least not past when he had been four years old.

But then, of course, Nakula had to break the moment. He pulled his hand away from Yudhisthira, stood up straight, and said, "I really don't think that you should enter any of the competitions, though. You're too old."

Yudhisthira bristled. "I may have just had a birthday, Nakula, but I'm certainly not old."

"It's because you're getting gray hair," Nakula said. "It's a shame, really. Only fifty-something years old, and already getting gray hair."

"I'm twenty-nine years old, at least until twenty-one hundred hours tonight."

"Well, you look fifty-something." Nakula turned away from his brother. "It's stress. It will do that to a person. You ought to take after Arjuna, and try meditating sometimes."

Yudhisthira stood up angrily, following Nakula out of his study, trying to come up with a suitably witty retort to put his younger brother in his place. "Nakula, you--"

"Comm for you," Sahadeva suddenly said, popping up out of nowhere in front of Nakula. "It's Uncle Shalya."

Nakula seemed to cheer up instantly. "Do you think he heard about the contest? Is he coming? Is he entering anything?"

Sahadeva shrugged. "I don't know. He just asked to speak to you." Sahadeva held out the comm receiver to his brother. "Here he is."

Nakula took the receiver and began chattering away excitedly, gracefully stepping into another room to give himself some privacy. Sahadeva sat down beside Yudhisthira on a silk-covered couch that Yudhisthira was just settling into. "Maybe I am getting old," Yudhisthira moaned as his joints creaked into place. Then he looked sideways at Sahadeva, who was staring at a spot on the wall and smiling dreamily. "So, Sahadeva..."

"Hm?"

"What exactly did you get pierced?"

Sahadeva turned toward his brother and pulled up part of his shirt, revealing the diamond stud embedded in his belly button.

Yudhisthira looked at it, and sighed. He couldn't understand why someone so unearthly beautiful would be so determined to mutilate his own body.

"It's not mutilation," Sahadeva explained. "It's decoration. It's enhancement."

Yudhisthira gave his brother another sideways look.

"What?" Sahadeva asked, confused. Then he suddenly turned his head toward the door behind which Nakula had disappeared a few moments ago, and mouthed sadly, "Uh-oh."

Nakula suddenly came storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He hung up the comm receiver with a dramatic click of a button, and then threw it down on the floor in disgust. "Damn," he hissed, "dammit!" His lower lip trembled.

Yudhisthira stood and watched this, but knew better than to say anything.

Nakula turned his angry glare toward Sahadeva and said, "He brought _that _up again. I told him not to. He wouldn't shut up, so I said no. And then he said he wasn't coming. To the contest."

Yudhisthira had no idea what _that _was, but figured that now would be a bad time to ask. Instead he and Sahadeva sat still and silent, watching Nakula stand with tears in his golden eyes and his shoulders shaking in a violent way, threatening to blow or blubber at any moment.

But Nakula took a deep breath, and seemed to steady himself. He bent over and picked up the receiver unit that he had thrown to the ground. "It's not fair," he said to nobody in particular as he straightened up. "People shouldn't keep asking you to have to choose." He suddenly fixed his unsettling golden eyes squarely upon Yudhisthira. "I chose you, okay?! I chose you, so now you'd better not let me down. Got it?!"

Yudhisthira didn't understand a word of what Nakula was saying. He thought that on some level he had just been paid a profound a compliment, yet he could not help but shiver at what he saw in Nakula's eyes.

* * *

VII.

Arjuna was a storm cloud brooding beneath the shadow of a tree blending into a black, starless night sky. Drona approached him with caution.

"Well," Drona said, sitting himself down in the grass beside Arjuna, "I would have thought that you would be excited tonight."

Arjuna grunted but said nothing. The palace gardens were quiet around him, echoing his obstinate silence. But still Drona sat and waited for a response. Arjuna knew that his teacher had the patience to sit there for years if he had to. The silent treatment was a lost cause. But still, Arjuna bit his lip and said nothing, determined to wait at least until he had properly decided _what _to say to his teacher.

"I didn't ask for this silly contest thing," Arjuna finally said.

"I know." Drona folded his hands in his lap. "But I thought that you needed a challenge."

"You thought that you wanted to show me off," Arjuna said, angrily.

Drona was taken aback. "Is that such a terrible thing?"

"You told me that pride and vanity were sins." Arjuna buried his face in his arms and thought of jealousy, which was also a sin. He thought of all the times he had seen Mr. Drona give Ashwatthama a smile or a look or a pat on the shoulder or some whispered joke in Panchalan that they both laughed at, and had felt jealousy stirring inside him. _Everyone's a user, Arjuna._

"This is not about pride or vanity," Drona said slowly, with his usual musical accent, but hurt in his voice. "I think that you are an amazing young man, Your Highness."

Arjuna finally lifted his head out of his arms, staring up at his teacher.

"And you deserve glory," Drona said, suddenly vehement.

Arjuna bit his lip again, and looked away from his teacher.

"And if you try to tell me that you don't like the attention," Drona said, impatiently, "I'll know exactly how much you're lying." Drona tapped his head. "Never lie to a priest, Arjuna."

Arjuna finally laughed.

"If you will not do this for yourself," Drona said, standing up and brushing the grass brusquely off his robes, "then do this for your family. You will bring glory and honor upon your dynasty."

Arjuna stood up slowly, remembering a time when he had been much younger and dreaming of some way to bring glory to his brothers, some way to make Bhima and Yudhisthira be proud of him. "All right," Arjuna said. Then he pouted again, "But you and Nakula shouldn't have planned this behind my back."

Drona sighed wearily. "It had seemed like a good idea to involve your brother, before I actually met and spoke with him."

Arjuna laughed again. "Yeah, most people can only take Nakula in small doses--"

"He was very enthusiastic about the project," Drona said. "Perhaps too much so. I did not want him to build target drones with self-defense capabilities."

"He was probably just joking about fitting them with lasers."

"Never lie to a priest, Arjuna."

"Okay... He really wasn't joking."

Arjuna stood close to Drona for a moment, and then something wondrous happened. Drona reached out and gently touched Arjuna's shoulder. "I am sorry," he said. "I had thought that this announcement would make you very happy. I did not mean to make you upset."

Arjuna closed his eyes, savoring the sensation of Drona's hand against his shoulder. But he didn't say anything, suddenly deathly afraid that if he spoke, his voice would break.

"I wanted to do this as a gift for you," Drona went on. "In return for all that you have given me and my son."

Arjuna opened his eyes and stared at his teacher, inquisitively. "Ashwatthama?" He shook his head. "What have I ever done for Ashwatthama?"

"You are his friend, are you not?" When Arjuna nodded his head, Drona said solemnly, "Ashwatthama never had a friend before he met you."

Arjuna was silent for a moment, digesting this. Then he said quietly, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Always."

"What's an _agrapani_?"

For the second time that night, Drona looked taken aback. Then he said, "You do not know?"

"No. When I spoke to Drupada that one time, he told me ask someone when I was older."

Drona threw back his head and laughed. "Arjuna, you could have looked that up in the library or on the diginet."

Arjuna felt his cheeks flush with heat, but pressed on anyway. "I wanted you to tell me," he said softly.

Drona stopped laughing. His face grew serious. He nodded at Arjuna, solemnly. "I understand," he said. He sat back down on the grass, and gestured for Arjuna to sit beside him. "_Agrapani_ means 'right hand.' It is a word that describes a sacred bond between a king and his most loyal love. An agrapani is someone who has been bonded to a king in this way. I chose to be bonded to Drupada, once, a long time ago. So I am his agrapani. I will be forever. There is only one way for the agrapani bond to be broken, and that is if one of the bonded pair dies."

Arjuna didn't know what to think of that. "A sacred bond, meaning…?"

"It is a bond formed with maya." Drona did not seem to mind the look of shock on Arjuna's face. "That is why, in the past, only the asura kings would claim agrapani. Because only the asura kings had the power to make an agrapani bond. But Drupada is… He is different from other human kings. He was destined to rule not just one world, but many worlds. The same as the asura kings of the past. So he needed an agrapani. He chose me, and I agreed. That is the important thing about the agrapani bond – it can only be born out of a deep and pure love. It can never be forced upon an unwilling party." Drona sounded strangely clinical, almost detached, as he related this information to Arjuna. "Drupada and I could not complete the agrapani bond by ourselves. We were mere humans, we could not use maya. So we traveled the dark places in space, until we found an asura willing to bind us."

Arjuna regarded Drona carefully. "I thought that you hated asuras."

"I do."

"But you…"

"Asuras are evil, Arjuna. But that does not mean that I am unwilling to employ their powers for a greater purpose." He looked up at the starry night sky above them. "Drupada's rule over these planets would have been peaceful and just. We all knew that. And so we all were willing to go to any length for his sake."

Arjuna was no sure who _we _referred to. But he asked, "So why did Drupada tell me to ask you when I was older?"

"Oh, that is probably because, among the asura, it was tradition for the king to take his agrapani as a lover."

Arjuna's jaw dropped.

From the look on Drona's face, Arjuna could tell that Drona was amused – but not surprised – at his reaction. But Arjuna could still not keep his mouth from hanging open like an idiot. Drona continued, "That was not a requirement, of course, but it was a tradition. An asura tradition, of course – one that Drupada and I did not feel obligated to uphold."

"Wait." Arjuna's brain was still three steps behind the conversation. "Agrapani – a-and kings, they—together?!"

Drona sighed wearily. "Arjuna, are you even listening to me?"

"I'm listening!"

"Then I will tell you what kind of relationship Drupada and I _actually_ had. An agrapani must be completely loyal to his master, and willing to do anything in order to protect his master's throne. Which sounds exciting and romantic. But that was often not true for me. Most of the time, I merely stayed by Drupada's side and protected him as a bodyguard. Sometimes I eliminated his enemies. Sometimes I did so covertly. Sometimes not. One time he ordered me to protect a Kuru diplomat who had turned spy. That was how I met Kripi. We were married not long after that."

Arjuna spluttered. "You were _married _but you--?! But how—how?! With another man, I mean, how do you even--?!"

Drona sighed again. "Arjuna, did I ever say that Drupada and I shared a bed? No? No, I did not. Many, like you, assumed that we were lovers. But we were not. I am thinking that you are not yet mature enough to handle this topic of conversation."

Arjuna bit his lip and looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry."

"You seem awfully… what is the term… _hung up _on the sexual mechanics here."

Arjuna scratched his head. "I've just, uh, I've never heard of something like that before."

"Oh, it happens all the time. To be honest, with the way that you Kurus insist on keeping men and women separate in so many ways, I am surprised that we do not see _more _of it around here."

Arjuna's jaw dropped again.

Drona laughed. "I was right. This is not an appropriate topic of conversation for you. And I may be overstepping the boundaries of propriety as well, I fear. It is my job to teach you to master Gandiva, not to provide you with sexual education. Also, please do me a favor Arjuna, and do not tell your grandfather Bhisma that we spoke about this. I think he might very well behead me if he knew that I was explaining to you about--"

"We're Kuru. We don't behead," Arjuna said proudly. "But I still don't understand. How can two men…?" Unable to finish the question verbally, Arjuna instead made a gesture with his fingers to illustrate. The gesture was probably more obscene than his words would have been, but he still couldn't quite bring himself to speak the name of the taboo deed.

Drona laughed again. "Now _that _you may research yourself, Your Highness. I believe that there are quite informational books about this subject in your palace library. Many of which have illustrative diagrams."

Arjuna fell silent. His brain was still trying to digest what he had heard – trying to reconcile this new information with his old impressions of his teacher. Finally he asked, in a quiet voice, "Did you really love him?"

"Not did. I _do_."

Arjuna looked down at his hands. "Then it must have been very painful for you to leave him."

"It was. But I had to."

"Why?"

Drona opened his mouth as if he were about to answer, but then stopped. He looked away from Arjuna, frowning at nothing in particular. Finally he asked, "Arjuna, what level of security clearance do you have?"

"Uh… Yellow? I think."

Drona shook his head sadly. "I am sorry," he said. "I promised your great-uncle Bhisma that I would obey his security restrictions… I am truly sorry."

Arjuna sat in silence for a moment. Then he said, "That's all right." He stood up, brushing grass off his legs. "Um, thank you. For answering my questions."

"Well, you are an adult. I do not feel that I should hide things from you." Drona remained sitting as he spoke.

Arjuna scratched his head. "Okay. I've got one more question."

"Please, go ahead."

"So the asura that you and Drupada met… Did it just… Did it just help you? Just like that?"

Drona laughed. He seemed to be doing that a lot that evening. "Oh, that is a long story! To sum, though, I will say this; it was serendipity. Drupada and I encountered a stupid asura who had gotten himself into some trouble. We helped him. In return, he promised to grant us a boon. So we asked him to bond us."

"A 'stupid asura'?"

"Remember the name _Mayasura_, Arjuna. He is both the most brilliant and the most inexplicably foolish asura ever born." Drona turned his gaze up toward the night sky. "Mm. This makes me remember. Things were different, then. Drupada and I made so many promises, to each other, to the gods, to the worlds that we planned to conquer. But things changed. Drupada and I will pay for those broken promises in our next lives. Or perhaps in the hells of the afterlife."

"Wh--? No!" Arjuna shook his head vehemently. "You're not going to hell! That's stupid – don't say that!"

Drona looked surprised at Arjuna's protest. Then his face softened. "You are still innocent, Your Highness." He looked up at the stars again. "And you do not understand the types of deeds that I have done in my past."

"But--"

"You were meant to walk on Heaven's path," Drona suddenly said, his voice solemn, and oddly heavy. "But the rest of us, Arjuna? The rest of us mere humans? We all burn in hell when our time comes. This is not something to despair over. It is the inevitable price of our sins." Finally he looked up at Arjuna, his eyes seeming to pierce straight through Arjuna's heart. "I can only pray, Your Highness, that you are never sullied as such by the sins of this world. You are already so far above us… If you fall, you can only fall faster, farther, more painfully than the rest of us. You and all of your brothers."

* * *

VIII.

Duryodhana switched off the last lamp in his bed chambers, plunging the room into complete darkness.

"Yes," Yuyutsu said, "they only come when it's dark."

"Bloody creepy lot of ghosts," Duryodhana mumbled, although he had to agree that this was true. During his own sleepless nights when he had listened to the ghosts whispering around him, whenever he had tried to turn on a light, the whispering voices - and the sensation of something _else _in the room with him - had vanished.

Duryodhana folded his legs beneath himself, seating himself on the floor across from Yuyutsu and reaching out to hold Yuyutsu's hands. "And suppose they don't come tonight?" Duryodhana asked.

"They'll come." Yuyutsu squeezed his brother's hands nervously. "They taught me. Whenever I want to call them, I can. All I need to do is remember them and pray."

Duryodhana shivered. He had always tried to ignore the whispering things in his bedroom at night. He had always preferred to think of them as figments of his overworked and overstressed imagination. Finding out that they were real, and that meek little Yuyutsu had learned how to summon and speak to them, both terrified and thrilled Duryodhana. This meant that he was not crazy. This meant that he was potentially involved in something very dangerous. But it also meant that he was special - that he was marked - that he had been given _power_ by a force greater than he could understand. Perhaps Yudhisthira was not the only one blessed by the gods, after all.

"They're here," Yuyutsu suddenly said, in a very soft voice.

Duryodhana sucked in his breath. That feeling was back, that feeling that there was something else in the room with him. But for the first time in years, Duryodhana was not tired or half-asleep or lying tangled in his crumpled bedsheets, folding a pillow over his head, trying to block out the shadows. This time he was awake. This time he was ready.

Duryodhana suddenly stood up, pulling himself up to his full, intimidating height. "You there!" he cried out, while Yuyutsu gave a startled gasp from his seat on the floor, and the crowding shadows pulled back in surprise. "Ghosts! Here me and listen to me! I demand to know what manner of beasts you are!"

In response, the shadows in the room hissed and whispered.

Duryodhana glared down impatiently at Yuyutsu. "Well, what are they saying?!"

Yuyutsu stood up quickly, then hesitated. He turned to a deep shadow to his left. "Are you sure?" he asked the shadow, hesitantly. The shadow buzzed and clicked in response, so Yuyutsu took a deep breath, and reached for his brother's hand. "All right," he said.

Yuyutsu grasped Duryodhana's hand and squeezed it tightly. Duryodhana's hand tickled for a moment - and the ice inside of him creaked and groaned in response - and then Duryodhana realized that he could understand what the shadows around him were saying.

((Yuyutsu has become very skilled at using maya,)) the deepest, darkest shadow in the back of the room said. ((Although we have not yet begun to scratch the surface of his true potential. You too, O King, have much to learn from us,)) the shadow said. Its voice was rough and gravely, yet somehow slick and oily at the same time. It was not a human voice. ((We have been waiting for decades for the moment when you would finally decide to listen to us.))

"Maya?!" Duryodhana shook his head angrily. "No way. Only asuras can use maya. This isn't maya."

((But it is.)) The shadows crowded around Duryodhana and Yuyutsu, moaning in protest at Duryodhana's statement. ((But you are not an asura. Nor are you a human. You are something else entirely - something new. Something miraculous.))

Duryodhana clutched at Yuyutsu's shoulders. "No," he said, simply.

((Yes. Did you never wonder about the circumstances of your birth?))

"Of course. But Grandpa Bhisma had me tested when I was born. He told me so. I have one hundred percent human DNA."

((Yes, but you are still not a human.))

"Obviously you ghosts are not much in the way of biologists."

((We are not ghosts.))

"Then what manner of shadows are you?!" Duryodhana snapped, angrily. "Why do you torment me at night?! What do you know about me?! _What are you monsters?!_"

((We are your servants, O King.))

Yuyutsu made a nervous, strangled sound in his throat. The shadows were pouring around and over his feet, rushing to bow before Duryodhana. They moved like black liquid, darkness moving through darkness. Duryodhana could more sense than see what they were doing.

"Tell me who you are," Duryodhana demanded again.

((We are memories,)) the shadows chorused in their unearthly, inhuman warble. ((We have been sent to teach you to use your maya, and to advise you to ensure that you achieve the throne and the crown that is your birthright. That is all.))

"My throne and crown?!" Duryodhana pushed Yuyutsu away from him, freeing up his arms for appropriate angry gestures. "My birthright has already been stolen by Yudhisthira! Some servants you lot are."

The shadows swirled around Duryodhana. ((Not yet, not yet,)) they sighed. ((Your honorable father will not let that come to pass. But he alone cannot resist Bhisma, pawn of the devas, forever. The day will come when you will have to fight your cousin for what is rightfully yours.))

Duryodhana threw back his head and laughed, bitterly. "Fight Yudhisthira! I couldn't do that. He's so... He's my cousin. And he's such a terminal _wimp_." Duryodhana shook his head. "Yudhisthira is harmless."

((And yet he stands to steal everything that is rightfully yours.))

The smirk on Duryodhana's face faltered.

((You must build, O King.)) The shadows slithered and hissed. ((You must cultivate your own power.))

"Oh please. If this is about having people on my _side_, then I have plenty. Everybody likes me," Duryodhana said.

((Not like. Might. You must cultivate your own army.))

"I have one hundred loyal brothers at my command," Duryodhana said, then cast a meaningful glance at Yuyutsu, who was standing humbly among the shadows, his head bowed. "And I have a servant skilled in the craft of maya, whether he is human or not."

((You must cultivate your own court.))

"I have Grandpa Bhisma, I have Uncle Vidura, I have my father and mother, and I have Mr. Dhaumya, and that crazy priest's son, what's-his-name, Aswatito."

The shadows hissed. ((Not Bhisma. Not Ashwatthama.))

"Why not?"

((They are devakin. They are your enemies.))

Duryodhana snorted dismissively. "Please."

((Most importantly, you must have the one thing that all the great kings of the past have had.))

"What's that?" Duryodhana tapped his foot thoughtfully. "A crown?"

((No. An _agrapani._ A servant who will personally smite your enemies and enforce your laws. A servant devoted to you body and soul.))

Duryodhana shook his head again. "Nah, I don't think so. Grandpa Bhisma only mentioned _agrapani_ once, and he said that only asura kings had _agrapani._ Human kings aren't allowed to take _agrapani._ Except for Drupada, but he only gave himself one because he's an arrogant old dirtfox, certifiably crazy, and according to Grandpa Bhisma probably a queer too."

((You, O King, who are neither human nor inhuman, will rule in a new era. You will rule not just this world, but many worlds, with your _agrapani _at your side. You must choose your _agrapani _carefully, though--))

"Hells, that's easy." Duryodhana waved his hand dismissively at the shadows. "If it's so important, then Arjuna can be my _agrapani_. He's completely loyal to me. And he's the most powerful warrior on this or any world."

The shadows hissed again, this time angrily. ((No devakin!)) they shrieked. ((You think that Arjuna will choose to betray his own brother for your sake?))

Duryodhana paused for a moment, then answered slowly, "Likely. Arjuna is easy to manipulate. He is hungry for affection. He trusts me. He confides in me. He's always felt that Yudhisthira was never much of a brother to him. His own words. I told you he confides in me. Besides," Duryodhana said proudly, "He's my _guy._"

The shadows were silent for a moment, then chorused again, ((No devakin!))

"Every time you say that, it makes me less inclined to trust you." Duryodhana paced around his room angrily, pushing aside wisps of shadow-matter as he did. "Any creatures that are the enemies of the gods and their devakin children are surely enemies of mine."

((You are mistaken, O King. The devas - what you call the gods, whether they are or not - are indeed your enemies. They created Yudhisthira simply to take away what is yours. They will resist your attempts to fulfill your destiny, to rule the many human worlds beneath one throne--))

"Enough," Duryodhana suddenly said, throwing out his hands, "I will not stand here and listen to delusional ghosts lying to me and defaming the gods and my own cousin!"

((We speak the truth. You must choose your _agrapani _soon and wisely, before Yudhisthira can strengthen his position.))

"Oh, all right!" Duryodhana huffed impatiently. "How's this for a criterion? I'll just take whoever is crowned champion of the weapons contest next month as my _agrapani_. There. Happy now?"

((We think, O King, that you are only saying as much so that you may still choose Arjuna.))

"Enough!" Duryodhana repeated. "I grow weary of listening to the advice of a lot of dead ghosts. Be gone with you!"

When the shadows did not leave, Duryodhana tried to throw his hands out more dramatically. "Be gone with you!" he repeated, as imperially as he could.

The shadows still slithered and hissed.

"_Be gone with you_!" Duryodhana shouted, one last time. This time the ice twisted inside of him, and all of the lamps in his room suddenly flared into life.

For a moment, Duryodhana saw the shadow-things bathed in light - thin, ghostly, floating things, tatters of black and gray matter hanging in filthy swirls in the air around. Then the shadow things shrieked and hissed and chattered angrily, vanishing as if they had never been in the first place.

Duryodhana turned and looked slowly at Yuyutsu, who was standing on the other side of the room now, his mouth hanging open, his face pinched and drawn. "Did you see them?" he asked Yuyutsu.

Yuyutsu nodded slowly.

"Yuyutsu, I don't think those things..." Duryodhana desperately tried to prevent his hands from shaking. "I don't think those things are our friends. I don't think they're on our side."

Yuyutsu nodded miserably. "I never heard them say anything about devakin being our enemies, before." He looked down at his feet. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Lord Bhisma is a devakin, but he has always been kind to me. I think you're right, Your Highness. I think those things may not be on our side."

"Yeah, and that means that we can't trust what they say." Duryodhana stepped over to his brother, and gently took Yuyutsu by the shoulders. "I don't want to talk to them again," he said, "and I don't want you to, either."

Yuyutsu looked up at Duryodhana. "But I think, Your Highness, I think that those ghosts might have answers. They might be able to tell us why you and I can use maya. They taught me how to use my maya, so I think that they might be--"

"It's not maya," Durydhana repeated for what felt like the millionth time that day. "They said that it was maya, but we can't trust what they say, remember?" Duryodhana tilted Yuyutsu's chin up toward him. "Isn't it obvious? You and I have been given a gift from the gods. Those dark things are just trying to confuse and manipulate us. They want us to use our gifts to work for them."

"Perhaps." Yuyutsu shifted his gaze away from Duryodhana's eyes. "I wish I knew for sure, though. I wish I knew why you and I, and only you and I, were born with these gifts. I wish I knew why the shadows were helping me for all these years. I wish I knew what they were." Yuyutsu took a deep breath. "I wish I knew for sure that they wouldn't be back."

"Who cares if they come back or not?" Duryodhana stepped away from Yuyutsu. "A little light is enough to send them running away with their tails between their legs."

"I hope you're right, Your Highness."

"Of course I'm right." Duryodhana stretched his arms over his head and yawned. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've had just about enough of ghosts and monsters for one night. I don't think that your friends will be back to bother us tonight or for many nights to come, Yuyutsu. I have to admit, they were interesting to talk to. But. I have more important things to worry about, tomorrow."

Yuyutsu blinked at him. "What could possibly be more important than--?"

"Than ice and ghosts and monsters and this business about me being the rightful ruler of all the human worlds and having to get myself an _agrapani_?" Duryodhana grinned at his brother. "My sword, that's what. I'm going to have to get back in shape if I'm going to challenge Bhima at this weapons contest thing."

"Oh," said Yuyutsu in a small voice. "Of course."

* * *

IX.

The month preceding the contest passed quickly. Arjuna spent every day training with Drona, and listening to Ashwatthama rehearse the hymns he would sing at the opening ceremonies, and listening each day as more news of guests from far-off planets filtered into the palace. Arjuna ate dinner with his family each night, when Nakula and Sahadeva always showed up at the dinner table smeared with grease and occasionally sporting fresh burn calluses on their fingertips, and Bhima was often largely absent, since evenings were the only time that he had free to practice his fencing.

One night, Grandpa Bhisma ate dinner with Arjuna's family. Arjuna listened to him speaking to Arjuna's mother.

"If they can handle themselves as adults, then of course," Bhisma was saying, waving his hand at Bhima's empty seat. "I don't see why both he and Duryodhana shouldn't both enter the fencing competition. It will be interesting to see them both competing together..."

Arjuna's mother coughed.

"I wouldn't dream of letting those two practice together, though." Bhisma gave a pointed look to Yudhisthira, who was busy pretending to concentrate on his food and pretending to ignore the conversation going on at the table. "And I expect both Bhima and Duryodhana to conduct themselves in a sportsmanlike manner at the competition," Bhisma said darkly. "Our family cannot afford to have an ugly public incident in front of foreign dignitaries."

Yudhisthira swallowed nervously.

Three days later, Nakula was trailing Arjuna during his morning training, a small video camera strapped to his palm.

"Nakula," Arjuna said warningly, as he pulled back Gandiva's string while Nakula crouched conspicuously behind Arjuna.

"Arjuna," Drona said, echoing Arjuna's tone of voice. "You must not let distractions distract you."

"Besides, I need this data," Nakula said, peering through the lens of the camera as Arjuna unleashed a flurry of arrows that split the center of a straw target hundreds of yards away. "How else am I going to build a machine that can beat you?"

"There is no machine that can beat Arjuna," Drona said, proudly.

"Yeah, well, I like a challenge." Nakula fiddled with the settings on his camera, then said, "Can you do that thing where you shoot the arrows made of water? I need to catch that on film."

Arjuna sighed. "You're not supposed to be working against me," he sulked.

Nakula looked shocked at the accusation. "I'm not working against you, I'm working _for _you." He stood up quickly. "But I'm not going to hold back on my end of the project, okay? I promised Mr. Drona that I wouldn't hold back." He tapped his foot impatiently and glared at Arjuna. "It's not fair that you've got enchanted arrows, though. I can't make a drone that's water-proof _and _lightning-proof."

"I can also do wind and fire, in case you're interested."

"Well," said Nakula thoughtfully, "then that's settled. The drones are going to have to have lasers, or else it just won't be _fair._"

* * *

X.

In the remaining days before the competition, royalty from faraway stars began to arrive in and around Hastinapura. Arjuna endured what felt like endless bouts of handshaking and ceremonial greeting. He had precious little time to practice with his bow, let alone to practice inside the arena that had quickly been constructed for the contest.

On the final night before the competition, Drupada arrived, with his sons and his entourage of warriors in tow.

And for the first time that Arjuna could remember, Drona appeared nervous. "I should not be here," he said aloud for the fifteenth time in the past five minutes. Kripi squeezed his hand, but that did not seem to calm him. "This will be awkward," he said. "At best."

Arjuna and Ashwatthama stood in front of Drona and Kripi, waiting nervously in the small but ornate waiting room that had been set aside for them. Ashwatthama turned to his father and said, "Be still. We have no reason to be afraid of him. Not here."

"Being afraid of having my head lopped off is one thing," Drona huffed. "Being afraid of the social awkwardness is quite another."

Arjuna said nothing. Drupada had requested to greet Drona privately, but Drona had insisted on bringing his family, and Arjuna had insisted on accompanying him. Now they were all watching a closed door and waiting as nervously as they could.

Arjuna reflected silently that he still did not understand what exactly had happened between Drona and Drupada so many years ago. Neither Drona nor Ashwatthama had ever told him about it. Arjuna had theories, of course, but he doubted how accurate any of them were.

Suddenly, the door in front of them creaked open, and Arjuna tensed his shoulders. But it was not Drupada who stepped through. Rather, it was a young man with bluish-black hair curled behind his ears and a warm smile in his voice. "Ashwatthama!" the cried, throwing out his arms.

"Your Highness!" Ashwatthama ran forward to meet the prince, and the two of them embraced tightly. Ashwatthama pulled back for a moment, then reached up and put his hands on the prince's face. "You look wonderful," he said. "I'd heard the rumors, but... You really look great!"

"Thanks." The prince laughed brightly, then looked up at Drona and Kripi. "Mr. Drona, I don't suppose you even remember me?"

"Of course I remember you, Sikhandhi." Drona stepped forward, looking relieved. "Although you were hardly taller than my knee..." Ashwatthama stood aside as the two of them hugged. Sikhandi pulled back and said something in Panchalan, Drona nodded, and Sikhandi laughed again.

Someone else came through the door again, and before Arjuna knew what was going on, Kripi had cried out and rushed forward to embrace this man. She kissed his cheeks and said, with tears in her eyes, "I missed you so much! I didn't think you would be--"

"Of course I came." The new man had Kripi's dark skin and dark hair and an identical beauty mark beneath his left eye, the same as hers. He and Drona clasped hands affectionately, then the strange man threw his arm easily around Ashwatthama's shoulders. "Look at you!" he exclaimed. "You still have those freckles."

"I think they're permanent, Uncle Kripa."

Arjuna stood aside, watching all of this, feeling like an awkward spectator at this family reunion. He had not known that Kripi had a twin brother named Kripa or that she had left him behind on Panchala. Although he was proud of himself for being able to deduce as much without being told. Which meant, hopefully, that he wasn't actually as stupid as Nakula kept saying that he was.

"Kripa taught me how to fence and wrestle," Sikhandi explained to Drona, "after you left."

"As well as I could," Kripa said, his arm still around Ashwatthama's shoulders. "We both missed you all terribly--"

"Kripa, we had to--"

"I understand why you did what you did," Kripa said, solemnly. "Both Sikhandi and I do. But My Lord would never let either of us--"

"_Sikhandi!_" someone shouted, angrily. Arjuna turned, and his breath caught in his throat. Striding through the open doorway, white hair flying and ice-blue eyes blazing, came Drupada, flanked by a prince and a princess dressed in identical gowns of gold and silver and white.

For a moment, Arjuna's eyes lingered on Drupada's imposing form. He was old, as old as Grandpa Bhisma, but also every bit as straight-backed and strong-chinned. Drupada had a sharp nose and sharper eyes, and his face was lined with deep wrinkles. He radiated a kind of cold, barely restrained rage. Arjuna swallowed nervously. He had spoken with this man once before - this man, who was the oldest and most dangerous enemy of Arjuna's family - but this was his first time actually seeing Drupada's face. Arjuna was suddenly aware of how short and unimposing he himself looked.

Fortunately, Drupada did not waste a single glance in Arjuna's direction. His eyes were fixed squarely on Drona, who stood with his face carefully blank. "Did I give you permission to speak to this traitor, Sikhandi?" he asked. His voice was the same low, gravelly voice that Arjuna remembered from their audio conference years before.

"No, Father," Sikhandi murmured, stepping away from Drona and Ashwatthama. Kripa reluctantly let go of Ashwatthama's shoulder and stepped aside.

Drupada's eyes flickered toward Ashwatthama, who stood his ground gamely under the king's withering glare. "I see that you brought your misbegotten son," Drupada said.

"Yes." Drona stepped calmly toward Ashwatthama, and then slowly placed his hand on Ashwatthama's shoulder. He stared back at Drupada, proudly and defiantly. "I wanted you to see him. I wanted you to look him in the eyes and to remember how you asked me to abandon him."

"Abandoned?!" the prince behind Drupada suddenly spat angrily, stepping around his father. "You abandoned us! You destroyed everything that Father had worked for--"

"Dhristadumnya," Drupada said, calming his son. Dhristadumnya, who had the same bluish-black curled hair as Sikhandi but none of the kindness in his eyes, bit his lip and seethed silently. Drupada looked back at Drona and said, "Yes, you did abandon us. And I brought Sikhandi and Dhristadumnya today, so that you might see what you had left behind. Sikhandi and Dhristadumnya, sons of Lord Shiva himself, could have been your pupils and your champions," he went on, finally casting a glance over at Arjuna, "instead of that sniveling Kuru prince that you now serve like a faithful dog."

"Don't you dare insult Arjuna!" Ashwatthama suddenly blurted out, angrily.

"Don't you dare speak to my father like that!" Dhristadumnya countered, his eyes blazing. "How dare you! You're a priest - learn your place!"

Arjuna glanced back and forth between the two of them, too embarrassed to say anything. Now that he looked, he could see the devakin markings curling up the back of Sikhandi's and Dhristadumya's necks, and along the bare shoulder of the princess standing silently behind Drupada. Arjuna's eyes lingered on the princess, who was watching her brothers with a taught expression on her face, her lips pursed in disapproval. Her dark, bluish-black hair fell in waves down her back, woven throughout with ribbons of gold and red. The fact that she was dressed identically to Dhristadumnya made Arjuna think that she was surely his twin. _Great, more twins, _Arjuna thought. Arjuna's eyes helplessly traveled down the front of the princess's soft chest, down to the curve of her waist. He tried to concentrate on what Drona and Drupada were saying, but he kept wondering what the princess's name was, or what her voice sounded like, or what the back of her neck would smell like.

"Dhristadumnya has something to tell you," Drupada said, looking back at Drona.

"Yes." Dhristadumya took one step toward Drona, who did not flinch, but whose hand tightened on Ashwatthama's shoulder. "When I turned thirteen years old and became a man," Dhristadumnya said, his chin in the air, "I forfeited my devakin Gift in exchange for a boon from Lord Shiva." Dhristadumnya threw back his shoulders angrily. "I will be the one to end your life, Drona," he said. "For the honor of my father and that of our family, I swear I will destroy you."

Dhristadumnya turned on his heel. "That is all," he said. Then he, his father, and his sister left the room. Arjuna stared at the princess as she left, watching the muscles in her shoulders work and her hips sway beneath her gown as she walked. Sikhandi followed them, his head hung low. Finally, that left only Kripa in the room with Drona and Arjuna and Drona's family.

"Father...?" Ashwatthama asked, fearfully.

Drona clutched at Ashwatthama's shoulder, his face white. "I told you that would be awkward," he said.

* * *

XI.

The sun was still an hour from rising when Duryodhana headed down to the contest arena. He figured that he had less than an hour to practice, and he had to make the most of it. He could see that the arena was lit up and could hear the sounds of other competitors already there; of course, he had known ahead of time that he wouldn't be the only one with the idea to practice on the morning of the competition. Oh well. As long as Bhima wasn't there, he didn't care who was watching.

As it turned out, however, there _was _someone watching the arena floor, from an observation deck high above the audience stands for commoners. "Who is that?" Duryodhana asked, squinting up at the stands, and effortlessly parrying a thrust from Vikata. "Can you see from here?"

"No," Vikata said, thrusting again, and clearly vexed that Duryodhana was able to defend himself without even having to concentrate on his opponent. "But I saw them go up there earlier. A group of women. I think they might be Panchalan."

Duryodhana's interest was piqued. "Interesting," he said. Then he swiftly ended his duel with Vikata with one thrust. "Since I'm the host for this event, I should probably go speak with them," he said, already stripping off his protective gear and heading away from his brother.

Duryodhana showered faster than he ever had before, snapped his fingers impatiently to hurry the servants who appeared to dry and fix his hair, and then dressed himself as casually as a crown prince possibly could. Then he headed up toward the observation decks. He didn't go immediately toward the level where the women were watching from, but instead stealthily slipped into the glass-fronted deck immediately below them. He looked around to make sure that he was alone, then pressed his hand against the ceiling above him. He felt ice tingling beneath his fingertips, and then he listened.

He could hear voices, as clearly as if the speakers were standing at his ear instead of a floor above him. The voices were speaking a dialect of High Panchalan. Duryodhana smile to himself, smugly. The many years of studying the language that Bhisma had inflicted upon him had paid off – he was nearly as fluent as Yudhisthira was. Duryodhana did not think that Bhisma would be very pleased to learn that his grandson was applying his hard-earned language skills to eavesdropping, though. Oh well. Bhisma didn't have to know.

"Are you sure they're going to do that here? The arena ground doesn't look wide enough," one voice said.

"It doesn't look it, but it is," another voice answered smoothly. "Here. Specs." The sound of buttons tapping. Was she holding an electronic reader? Probably.

"Still, I wouldn't want to be sitting in the lower rows during the riflery competition," a third voice answered. "Particularly not during the long-range microwave sustained-burst--"

"You won't be. You'll be sitting with me."

"But Your Highness, I still don't understand why your father insisted on being seated in the stands instead of in an observation deck."

"Mm. You know Father. He wants to be down close to the sweat and blood. Besides, it's not like we'll be sitting with the commoners. We'll still be high up, among the seats of honor."

"Do you think there will be blood?"

"Likely," the woman who had been addressed as 'Your Highness' answered again. Duryodhana realized that she could only be one person. "I'm here for the blood, at least. And for the homoeroticism of the wrestling tournament. Also, to watch the Kurus embarrass themselves. These princes hate each other so much. If we're lucky, there will be an incident."

"Oh, and I suppose you have no interest whatsoever in the bratty little prince with the magical bow who stole your priest?" the first woman asked.

Duryodhana was beginning to figure things out, now. There were three women above him. One was obviously Drupada's daughter, Princess Whatshername, Dhristadumnyita or something or whatever. The two other women were likely either her attendants, or perhaps friends from among the noble families of Panchala.

Drupada's daughter – Duryodhana could _not _remember her name for the life of him - laughed. "No interest whatsoever." She snorted derisively. "I've seen devaweapons on film. They're not so spectacular." Then she paused and said, a bit more thoughtfully, "Still, if he is Drona's student, he will be good. Very good. So there's that to look forward to, at least. I wonder _how _good, though."

"You saw him last night, didn't you, Your Highness?"

"Yes…"

"Well? Verdict?"

She laughed again. "Hmm. I'll say 'strapping.' Typical archer's body, though – overdeveloped on top. Unfortunately he never opened his mouth to say a single word. He also didn't do anything to indicate that he _doesn't _have the personality of a spoiled over-entitled toddler."

"But 'strapping.' "

"Yes. Strapping. But he just stood there like an idiot when Dhristadumnya told Drona about his vow. Not impressed by that."

"You could very well best him in a contest of skills, Your Highness."

"No, actually. Probably not. Not if he's Drona's student. Archery is just a hobby, it's not my life. And I didn't bring my bow anyway." Drupada's daughter made a disapproving click with her tongue. "Kurus don't allow women to handle weapons. We're not allowed to compete here today, either."

"They're so backwards here."

"I know."

"Gods, so primitive."

"And now they have two Crown Princes, too. No wonder their civilization is falling apart at the seams." Drupada's daughter sighed. "At least they're keeping the traditions alive, though."

"Traditions like mostly-naked wrestling?"

"Yes. That."

"That's the reason that I brought my binocular goggles," one of the other women said.

More laughter, from all three of the women. Duryodhana didn't quite catch what they said next. Then he decided that he was done listening, and pulled his hand off the ceiling. He wasn't sure whether to be bemused or angry about their contemptuous attitude toward Kuru. He decided to settle on bemused. Silly stupid empty-headed women, what did they know? If Drupada's daughter was really so arrogant that she thought she could compete against Kuru's princes in an archery competition, then she was four times the fool that he had thought she was. Well, all Panchalans were fools. Crazy fool, apparently, if they actually let their women run around shamelessly like that, dabbling in archery and Lord-knows-what-else. Letting women handle weapons – and even worse, letting them compete in the weapons contest?! The idea was absurd. What next – letting _commoners _take up arms and compete, too?! Duryodhana chuckled at the thought.

Duryodhana shook his head, still chuckling. He swiftly rejected his original idea of approaching the women to talk to them. He had no time to deal with fools, after all. And he needed to get back to the palace anyway, and start fulfilling his duties as a host of the day's festivities. He could waste his time thinking of Drupada's beautiful but arrogant daughter – and how much _he _would relish putting _her _in her place – later.

* * *

XII.

On the morning of the competition, Arjuna donned his father's ceremonial armor and his finest gold and jewels, which did not so much make him feel like a champion as it did make him feel like a ridiculous living bauble.

Arjuna stared at himself in the mirror in his bedroom, frowning. A servant finished securing a gold coronet to his head, then stood back and said proudly, "You look splendid, Your Highness."

Arjuna looked down at the gold gauntlets on his arms and thought, _Father wore this once. Probably for some ridiculous ceremony, and never for a real war. But still... Father wore this once._

Arjuna turned and strode out of his bedroom, out of his private chambers, and into the common area that all of his brothers and his mother shared between their apartments. Nakula and Sahadeva were waiting for him, seated on a couch on either side of Drona. Drona's eyes lit up when he saw Arjuna, but Arjuna started when he saw Nakula and Sahadeva's hair. "You two--!" he gasped.

"Like it?" Nakula ruffled the blue-and-gray spikes that he had transformed his formerly red hair into. "Sahadeva and I decided that we should dye our hair Arjuna-colors. Since we're rooting for you, you know."

Arjuna sighed. "Arjuna-colors?"

"Yeah, only we had to decide on which colors would be your official theme colors."

Arjuna looked at Drona, who mouthed, _Not my idea,_ then shook his head in disapproval.

Sahadeva pointed at his head, which was topped with blue and gray spikes identical to Nakula's. "It took hours," he pointed out.

"What, and I don't get theme colors?" Bhima joked, striding up behind Arjuna, his fencing gear clanking around him.

"You don't need us to cheer for you," Nakula pointed out. "Arjuna does. His real competition isn't the other archers. His real competition is what we've designed." There was a sly look in Nakula's eyes. "Believe me, Arjuna will need all of the cheering he can get."

Arjuna swallowed.

"At least it's an improvement over the last dye job," Arjuna's mother pointed out. Yudhisthira led her out into the room, holding her hand. Both of them were dressed in their ceremonial best, and Yudhisthira's hair had been swept behind the golden crown that only Kuru's crown prince was allowed to wear. Arjuna looked at his brother and tried not to remember that Duryodhana also had an identical crown. "I think the blue looks lovely on you, Nakula," Arjuna's mother said.

Nakula gave his mother a sideways look. "Thanks," he said, hesitantly. Arjuna could tell that his mother's approval had just robbed the stunt of some of its appeal for Nakula.

"Mother and I will be in the stands for the opening ceremony," Yudhisthira said, leading his mother down and across the room. "Bhima, Mr. Drona, will you take the rest of them to the competitor's area?"

Arjuna watched his mother's eyes linger over him for a moment. She looked both proud and sad at the same time. Arjuna wondered if she was thinking about his father. Then the moment passed, and she turned back to Yudhisthira, and said something softly to him, which caused him to hunch his shoulders in embarrassment.

Arjuna thought that it did not take much for his brother Yudhisthira to get embarrassed.

* * *

XIII.

"You two will wait here with the other competitors," Drona said, leading Bhima and Arjuna into the noisy, crowded waiting area beneath the contest arena. Arjuna could already hear the roar of the gathering crowd above him. "Wait until your events are called." Then he jerked his thumb toward Nakula and Sahadeva. "Your brothers will be with me at the back of the arena for most of the day. Understood?"

Bhima had already wandered off to talk to someone he recognized, which left Arjuna alone to nod and say "Yes."

"Right." Drona looked down at the watch around his wrist, and hissed. "I have to go," he said quickly.

"I know." Arjuna wished that Drona would stay with him as he prepared for the archery competition, but he knew that Drona did not want to miss Ashwatthama performing the opening ceremony and ritual sacrifice, which was set to begin in a few moments.

" 'Bye, Arjuna!" Sahadeva said, waving as he and Nakula followed Drona out through the crowd of gathering competitors.

Arjuna raised his hand and waved at his brother. Then he stood and watched Nakula and Sahadeva's spiky, colorful hair bobbing through the crowd for a few moments. Arjuna's eyes shifted upward, to the back of Mr. Drona's head. He remembered Drupada's icy eyes, and Dhristadumnya's angry curse.

"If I win this thing," Arjuna whispered to the back of Drona's receding head, "it will be for you."

Then Arjuna turned, and decided to look for Bhima. Or Duryodhana. Or whoever he could find first. He thought that it might be a good idea to avoid Dhristadumnya if he was already down in the waiting area, though.

Fortunately, Duryodhana and his crowd of brothers were hard to miss. They had taken up a large area and several benches with their bodies and their equipment. Duryodhana was there, stretching his thick legs behind his head. So were Durmada and Vikata and Durmukha and Duryodhana's three dozen other brothers who had entered the competition in various events, and Gandhari and Dusshala, Duryodhana's only sister.

Dusshala was fussing with Duryodhana's hair as he stretched. "Hold still!" she huffed, "If you go out there with your hair looking like a bird's nest--"

"I'll be wearing a helmet--"

"You're such a _guy. _That's gross. You're worse than my boyfriend."

Duryodhana paused. "Jayadratha? You're still dating that creep?"

"He's not a creep. You're just saying that because you're my brother and you're supposed to think that all of my boyfriends are creeps."

"Is he here today?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, he entered the fencing competition--"

"Good, then I'll be able to kick his--" Duryodhana paused again when he saw Arjuna striding proudly toward him. His eyes lit up. "Arjuna!"

Arjuna stood, unable to wipe the happy smile off his face. Drona was right - he did love the attention. Duryodhana's brothers crowded around him, gazing in wonder at the sight of Arjuna. "Is that our champion?" Gandhari asked, temporarily abandoning Durmukha's gloves that she had been fiddling with, and turning her blindfolded eyes toward Arjuna.

"I'm not a champion yet," Arjuna said, with what he hoped sounded like genuine modesty.

"Nonsense," Gandhari insisted, reaching out to touch Arjuna's chin with her slender fingers. "This is your day and your day alone."

"Mother!" Duryodhana's brothers protested, in a chorus. Dusshala and Gandhari laughed in unison in response. "A mother can only speak the truth," Gandhari said, fanning herself with a fan she pulled out of nowhere. "I am but a vessel through which truth flows. Sorry, darlings."

"Mother," Dusshala pointed out, "you're so _weird_."

"So says my daughter, who willingly dates that disgusting Prince Jayadratha." Gandhari sighed. "You may have inherited my good looks, Dusshala, but none of my excellent taste in men."

"She inherited all of your stubborness, too," Duryodhana said, standing up and ignoring the glower that Dusshala shot him in retort. "Arjuna, we'll all be cheering for you during the archery contest."

"Thanks," Arjuna said, grasping Duryodhana's thick, strong arm gratefully.

"I need to be in the stands," Gandhari said, turning one last time toward her sons. "You lot will be fine without your mother for a few hours, won't you?"

"Yes, Mother," they chorused.

"Come, Dusshala," Gandhari said, taking her daughter by the hand. "And don't think that I won't _hear _it if you so much as look at or try to wave to that awful Jayadratha."

Dusshala rolled her eyes dramatically. "I heard that, young lady," Gandhari said.

* * *

XIV.

Arjuna found a row of benches where the other archers were waiting, and decided to sit himself down and wait as well. He sized up his competition as he waited. There were many princes from many worlds, none of whom Arjuna truly recognized, although he vaguely recalled having met and greeted some of them in the previous few days. They had all brought their own bows, their own quivers of arrows. Arjuna sat empty-handed, for his bow and his arrows were in his heart. Other princes wandered in and out of the waiting area as their events began and concluded, chatting with each other. Nobody spoke to Arjuna.

Nobody, that is, until Sikhandi strode up to Arjuna, a grin on his face and nothing on his body save for a modest lioncloth at his waist and smears of grease and dirt. "Arjuna!" he cried out, jovially. Kripa was hurrying behind him, desperately trying to hand the prince a towel, which he largely ignored. "How are you doing?" Sikhandi asked, cheerfully. "Nervous?"

"No," Arjuna answered, his eyes traveling up and down Sikhandi's dark, muscular, and very oily body. The devakin markings on his shoulder glistened with sweat and grease. "Wrestling match?"

"Yeah. I'm still in, if I can make it past the next round." Sikhandi sat down with an audible squelch next to Arjuna. "Although the talk in the stands and down here is all about you. Most of the audience only seems to care about the archery competition. And you're the leading favorite so far. No pressure, though," Sikhandi said with a grin. Then he glanced over Arjuna's shoulder, and his eyes lit up as he spotted someone else that he knew. "Hey!" he called out, standing up quickly and trotting away from Arjuna.

Arjuna watched Sikhandi go, then turned to see Kripa, who was still standing in front of him, having apparently given up hope of catching Sikhandin long enough to towel him down, at least for the moment. "My prince has always been friendly," Kripa explained, slightly embarrassed on Sikhandi's behalf. "He's a kind soul. He doesn't believe in making enemies."

"Is Prince Sikhandi supposed to be my enemy?" Arjuna asked.

Kripa shook his head, slowly. Then he sat down beside Arjuna, pausing only a moment to avoid the grease splatter that Sikhandi's buttocks had left behind, and said in a low voice, "Prince Arjuna, I just wanted to thank you. For looking after my sister and her family, all these years."

Now it was Arjuna's turn to shake his head. "Don't, please." Then he looked up at Kripa and said, "I didn't know that Ms. Kripi had a twin brother. She never told me."

Kripa sighed. "I'm not surprised." He gazed off into space for a moment, the towel on his lap and the grease on the bench beneath him momentarily forgotten. "My sister and I were both originally from Kuru. She was a diplomat in the foreign service and I was a school teacher. When she was assigned to Drupada's court on Panchala, I packed up my things and followed her to Kampilya. I thought that it would be an adventure, teaching on a foreign planet." He laughed, somewhat bitterly. "Those were our glory days. It was Drupada who introduced Kripi and Drona to each other. He was always wily and clever, even when it came to matchmaking. At the time, I had simply thought that he was kind king. Stern, but protective and loving. He provided for me and my sister. But he was also an ambitious king. It was no secret that he yearned to have not just one world but many worlds beneath his feet. And we all thought, with Drona as the king's agrapani, that such would truly come to pass. Soon."

Arjuna looked up at Kripa, his eyes wide. "Drupada was planning to invade Kuru, wasn't he?"

"Yes. Kuru and Madra and all the surrounding inhabited planets."

"But you're _from _Kuru. Didn't you think...?" Arjuna trailed off, unsure how to finish his angry question.

Kripa smiled wearily at Arjuna. "I thought many things. But none of that matters now. After his agrapanileft him, Drupada became a changed man. It was if his legs had been cut out from under him. Where he once had ambition, now he only had rage. Where once his drive had been to bring many worlds under one peaceful rule, now his only drive was for revenge." Kripa closed his eyes. "I feared for my sister. I knew that I would know if she was ever hurt, or killed. And she never was. I also knew that she could not contact me, perhaps never again. I imagined that she was living happily with her husband and her son, somewhere where Drupada would never find her. For many years, I suppose that is actually what happened." Kripa opened his eyes again. "Then you came along, and changed all that." Kripa looked over Arjuna's shoulder, toward the direction where Sikhandi had disappeared. "Sikhandi was Drona's pupil, of course, before Drona left. She was ten years old when Drona left. She was hurt, of course, but forgiving. Always forgiving."

"He," Arjuna corrected Kripa.

Kripa blinked at Arjuna.

"You said 'she' when you were talking about Sikhandi."

Kripa coughed, then said, "Dhristadumnya was five years old. Not old enough to remember how close he was to Drona before that, but old enough to remember the hurt. His father cultivated his grief and his hatred." Kripa's mouth tightened. "All three of Drupada's children became my charges after my sister left. I knew why Drupada was keeping me close. I knew that Drupada was hoping that perhaps my sister would attempt to contact me, and that he would be able to find her and Drona through me..." Kripa trailed off, and then looked at Arjuna again. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know why I'm telling all of this to you. It's entirely inappropriate. You should be concentrating on preparing for the competition."

Arjuna shook his head. "No. I thank you for speaking with me. It's helped me understand a lot of things."

Kripa opened his mouth to say something else, but instead suddenly spotted Sikhandi, laughing and joking with a group of foreign princes. "Your Highness!" he cried out, jumping up and jogging after his elusive charge.

Arjuna turned his head and watched Kripa leave. Arjuna decided that he liked Kripa and Sikhandi, even if they were kin to Arjuna's enemies.

And so Arjuna sat and waited, for many more hours. Slowly, other competitors filed out of the waiting area, as their events were called. Arjuna listened to the roar and the cheers of the crowd above him. He imagined his mother and Yudhisthira and Aunt Gandhari and Uncle Dhritarashtra sitting in the stands, presiding over it all. He could imagine Uncle Vidura and Grandpa Bhisma sitting next to the blind king, narrating descriptions of all that occurred on the arena floor below.

Lost in thought, Arjuna only slowly became aware of a commotion in the waiting area. The remaining competitors were rushing forward around Arjuna, crowding around the entrance where they normally would have entered the arena, fighting for a spot to view something that was happening on the arena floor.

Arjuna jostled for a place among the crowd. "What's going on?" he asked a prince that he didn't recognize.

"The final match in the fencing competition," the prince said, excitedly. "It's Prince Bhima verus Prince Duryodhana," he went on, a hungry look in his eyes. "This will be _good. _I've heard that they _hate _each other."

"I'm afraid that they do," Arjuna said. He took advantage of his short height to wiggle his way to the front of the crowd of princes. Then Arjuna suddenly found himself standing on the threshold of the arena, the deafening roar of the crowd, many of them clapping their hands and stomping their feet, thundering in his ears. Arjuna looked out across the vast arena floor, which was empty save for the helmeted and masked figures dueling furiously in its center. Arjuna recognized Bhima's enormous height, and Duryodhana's quick, darting footwork. Their swords crashed and clanked, and their chests heaved. They thrust and lunged, aiming for each other's necks, each other's hearts. The bloodthirsty crowd screamed and roared. Arjuna's breath caught in his throat. He could tell instantly that there was nothing at all sportsmanlike about the way that his brother and Duryodhana were dueling. There was something desperate in Duryodhana's thrusts, and something taunting in Bhima's dodges.

Bhima threw back his enormous head and laughed. His helmet and faceplate did not stifle his roaring voice in the slightest. "Come on, come on!" he roared, the ground thundering with his footsteps. "Surely you can parry better than that! Or are you as blind as your father?"

Duryodhana screamed with rage and rammed his sword toward Bhima's stomach. Bhima dodged, but just barely. Some in the crowd booed at Bhima's insult, others at Duryodhana's response. But mostly the crowd screamed and shouted and clapped, egging the two of them on.

Bhima sliced his sword toward Duryodhana's neck - a move that was a clear violation of the rules. Duryodhana defended himself, then dodged and thrust, aiming to cleave through Bhima's knees. Also against the rules. Arjuna brought his hands to his mouth. They weren't playing anymore. They were trying to kill each other.

Arjuna looked away from the duelers and into the crowd, desperately searching for Yudhisthira and his mother. There they were. Arjuna's mother was up out of her seat and clutching at Gandhari's shoulder. Gandhari was shouting something angrily at her son, but her voice was being drowned out by the thundering crowd. Yudhisthira looked wide-eyed and horrified and paralyzed. No help there. Arjuna glanced over toward Bhisma, who was also up out of his seat and already stomping down toward the arena floor--

Then the crowd fell silent, and the sound of the two swords clanking abruptly ceased. Arjuna looked, and saw a tiny, red-headed figure standing between Duryodhana and Bhima, his arms outstretched, his jaw set. "_Cease,_" Ashwatthama said, angrily. His voice echoed throughout the silent arena.

Bhima stood, with his sword still raised, his chest heaving. Duryodhana also stood in a ready stance. He flipped up his protective faceplate and breathed heavily, glaring at Bhima. His ragged breathing was all too audible in the now-silent arena. "Never," Duryodhana hissed. "This beast insulted my father and flaunted the rules of the competition! I won't cease until I've put him in his place!"

" 'Flaunted the rules'?" Bhima laughed his least pleasant laugh. "It was Duryodhana who attempted to cut out my heart first!"

"I was defending myself! This is hardly fair, Bhima ought to be disqualified because of his Gift--"

"Ah, of course, Duryodhana invokes a claim of injustice only when he is finally losing--!"

"_SILENCE._" Ashwatthama glared at Duryodhana, then at Bhima. Both of them fell silent, but neither showed any sign of lowering his sword. Finally, Ashwatthama raised both of his hands above his head, his fingers spread. He began chanting, then slowly brought down both of his hands. Duryodhana's arms trembled, but suddenly, he began to lower his sword. Bhima followed suit.

"For clear and mutual violation of the rules of the fencing competition," Ashwatthama said, after he finished his chant and clasped his hands in front of him, "both of you are disqualified from seeking the title. A championship match between the two runners-up will be held instead. May the two of them restore the spirit of sportsmanship that has been grievously disregarded by these two arrogant princes."

The crowd erupted in an uproar, some jeering loudly, others cheering Ashwatthama's decision. Arjuna looked up, and saw Yudhisthira shaking his head, sadly. Then Arjuna saw Bhima stomping angrily toward the exit of the arena, Duryodhana following him in an equal rage.

* * *

XV.

Some time later, while Arjuna was still waiting on his bench with the last remaining archers, Ashwatthama wandered into the waiting area, saw Arjuna, and smiled. "Must be hard," he said, "having to go last."

Arjuna laughed. "Yes."

"I believe the expression for this is, 'saving the best for last.'" Ashwatthama's face suddenly turned serious. "Bhima shamed your family today. It's up to you to restore their honor."

Arjuna looked away from Ashwatthama, then said quietly, "I know." Then even quieter, "It took a lot of courage to do what you did. Not many people would risk stepping in front of Bhima when he's angry."

"I only did my job," Ashwatthama said. Then he managed to smile at Arjuna again. "I came back here to wish you luck," he said. "You might actually need it."

Arjuna was about to ask what Ashwatthama meant by that, but he was cut short by the sound of screaming coming from the arena. A moment later, one of the archers who had entered the arena a minute ago came running back into the waiting area, his right arm smoking, its flesh turning red and bubbly. "Lasers!" he screamed as his attendants rushed after him, "Those damn things are shooting lasers!"

Ashwatthama calmly watched the burnt archer rushing past him, then turned and smiled at Arjuna again. "Your little brothers are evil," he pointed out, cheerfully.

"Yeah. I know."

Ashwatthama sighed. "I suppose I should go back out there. Good thing Nakula gave me this. I didn't think I would actually need it, but..." Ashwatthama shrugged on a coat of dark fabric that Arjuna recognized as laser-retardant. "I'll see you out there in a few minutes," Ashwatthama said.

Arjuna heard a small explosion and another scream of pain from the arena floor, and gulped.

* * *

XVI.

Arjuna took three deep breaths, and stepped out into the arena. The crowd was already roaring and stomping. The arena floor was empty, save for Ashwatthama, who was standing in the center and announcing into a microphone.

"...third son of Pandu, prince of Kuru..." Ashwatthama announced, rattling off a list of Arjuna's titles.

Arjuna strode toward him, listening to his own gold ornaments clanking, trying not to notice the blast marks and charred spots now dotting the arena floor. He looked around, but saw no drones in the arena. Where were they?

"...son of Lord Indra himself, wielder of the legendary Gandiva bow..."

Arjuna looked around at the crowd above him. He saw Yudhisthira and his mother, leading their section in a standing ovation. Yudhisthira waved cheerfully at Arjuna, and Arjuna raised one hand to wave back nervously. Then Arjuna looked up and saw Bhisma and Vidura also chanting his name and clapping, and he raised his arm higher to wave at them. Then the whole crowd was stomping and chanting his name, and Arjuna raised both his arms to wave at all of them, soaking in their praise and their energy, unable to wipe the idiot, joyful grin off his face.

"And a man," Ashwatthama said, grasping one of Arjuna's arms and holding it high above his head, "who has always been as a brother to me." He turned his head and looked Arjuna in the eye, and Arjuna squeezed his hand tightly and nodded. Ashwatthama let go of Arjuna's hand, then, and began backing away. Quickly. "Good luck!" Ashwatthama called out as he sped away from the arena floor. Arjuna looked around one last time, and then he saw them - Nakula and Sahadeva and Drona, crouched beneath a shelter on the far end of the arena. There was a small keyboard in Nakula's hands. Nakula met Arjuna's eyes for a moment, then gave Arjuna his best evil smile. Arjuna saw Drona putting earplugs in his ears and Sahadeva pulling goggles over his eyes.

_What--?_

The first drone came at Arjuna almost before he realized what was happening. It shot out of the sky and toward his head, metal wings whirring, blades buzzing around its body. Fast as it was, Gandiva was faster. Arjuna ducked and Gandiva flared into life in his hands, arcs of lightning and thunder weaving together to create bow and string in less than a second. Arjuna was not aware of the way that the crowd gasped and cheered when they witnessed the birth of the miraculous bow. All he could see or hear was the drone shooting toward him. Arjuna let loose a volley of arrows which turned out to be completely unnecessary - the very fist arrow to leave his bow cleaved the drone clean in half. But by then there were more drones flying at Arjuna, from behind and the side.

Arjuna ducked and rolled, firing at the drones that were now coming at him from all directions. He fired arrows made of water and lightning, which soaked and short-circuited the drones, exploding some, merely dropping others dead and still out of the sky.

Now they were coming at him in droves, whirring and buzzing. A dozen, three dozen, a hundred, swarming at him like insects, blades and wings buzzing. Arjuna blanketed the sky around him with arrows, which stopped the drones from approaching him closely, but now it was different game - now the drones were firing back. A blast of laser fire singed Arjuna's hair. He ducked and dodged, his bow winking in and out of his hands, never hampering his movements. Arrows flashed from his bowstring, not a single one failing to find its mark. Arjuna was silently thankful that at least the drones were staying relatively low to the ground, preventing him from having to send his arrows up in the direction of the lowest level of the audience stands, several stories above the arena floor.

Arjuna fired more arrows, picking the drones out of the sky as soon as they appeared. But although his arrows never missed, he simply couldn't fire enough of them in time. Laser fire plucked at Arjuna's shoulders, and he took a blast to his knee. So Arjuna closed his eyes, dropped his bow, stood, and turned his thoughts inward. The drones flew toward him and some in the audience screamed, but Arjuna didn't hear them. He summoned the words that Drona had taught him, in his mind, and on his lips. He raised his bow and fired straight in front of him. And then there was a wall of lightning-charged water around him, deflecting the laser fire and expanding outward to engulf hundreds of drones before dissipating into thin air.

The crowd gasped and fell silent. Many of them had never seen an _astra, _a celestial weapon, invoked before.

Arjuna willed another arrow to appear on his bow, sensing that Nakula was nowhere near finished. He was right. Without warning, the ground around Arjuna's feet erupted in showers of dirt and mud. A hoard of spindly-legged mechanical monstrosities came swarming out of the ground, pincers clicking, barb-tipped tails lashing. Arjuna leapt and hopped out of range of their pincers, firing dozens of arrows into them as he did so, sometimes taking out two or three monsters with a single shot. The crowd clapped and cheered, but Arjuna still ignored them - the very ground beneath his feet was popping open at every step, as a new monster crawled out. They came up beneath his feet, in front of him, behind him, all around him. Arjuna jumped up again, and quickly invoked his second _astra_. He fired directly into the ground at his feet, and this time the ground beneath him froze and hardened, trapping the robots in a sheet of frozen mud.

Arjuna slid down onto the ice he had created, pausing for a moment to take a breath. But the drones would not give him a pause. More laser fire screamed past his cheek; Arjuna dodged and turned toward the source of the fire. A group of three tiny drones were whirling around each other, high up in the air above him. Arjuna grinned and took aim. The drones shot farther up into the air, but not before unleashing another volley of laser fire. Arjuna shot up missiles of lightning, covering himself in a shield of electricity that dispelled the lasers before they could touch him. Then Arjuna aimed and shot straight up into the air. The drones, still receding, were hundreds of stepclicks into the air by now, and invisible to the spectators watching around the arena. But not to Arjuna. Two explosions above the arena indicated that two of Arjuna's arrows had found their mark.

But the third explosion didn't happen.

Another blast of laser fire that Arjuna barely managed to dodge, and the third drone was still screaming around and above him. Arjuna aimed, then cursed and pulled back his arrow, lowering his bow. The drone had taken refuge in the stands around the arena, whirling amongst rows of screaming, panicked spectators. Arjuna tracked the drone with his eyes, waiting for a moment when it would move away from the audience and--

No such luck. The drone still shot blasts of laser fire at Arjuna; Arjuna countered with the lightning-shield _astra_ again, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to keep up this defensive position forever. If the drone didn't move away from the audience, then Arjuna might have to risk shooting into the stands.

Suddenly the drone hovered, whirred, and then landed right on top of somebody's head.

The crowd gasped. The drone had landed right on top of the head of Drupada's dark-haired daughter.

A few in the stands screamed, and Drupada himself stood up quickly and drew his sword, making as if to strike the thing. But his daughter calmly reached up with her slender hands and, before the drone seemed to realize what was happening, seized it, grasping at both its sides, crushing its folding wings in her hands, and holding it down to her head before it could get away again.

The people sitting in the stands behind Drupada's daughter ducked.

Drupada's daughter held the drone, which was now desperately struggling to break free of her grip, above her head calmly. She fixed her dark eyes upon Arjuna's and commanded him, in a voice that rang out through the arena, "Shoot it."

Arjuna loaded an arrow and drew his bowstring.

"Don't you dare!" Drupada shouted, angrily.

But his daughter smiled calmly at Arjuna. "I know you can do it. But I can't hold it forever. Please destroy this poor thing now, O Prince."

Arjuna saw Drupada moving to intervene, to block the arrow with his sword. So Arjuna had no more time to think. He aimed, and he fired. His arrow went screaming across the arena, up through the stands, and right through the princess's hands. The drone she had been holding shuddered, sparked, and split in two. It did not explode, but rather fell neatly in two halves into the princess's hands. She brought the two halves of the dead drone down into her lap, and nodded at Arjuna, gratefully. "Thank you," she said.

The crowd immediately erupted into a thunderous standing ovation, applauding Arjuna's incredible feat. Arjuna waved at the crowd and grinned. But his grin was a mask; his nerves were still on edge, his senses sharp and alert. He knew that Nakula surely must have had something worse up his sleeve--

Arjuna heard a roar from the far side of the arena. He turned, and saw something out of his worst nightmares charging toward him. It was a mechanical boar, all razor-sharp edges and gleaming metal joints, fire breathing out of its mouth.

_Gods damn you, Nakula. I mean it. Really._

Arjuna calmly lifted his bow and fired five arrows into the boar's mouth. The back of the boar's neck exploded in a shower of sparks and twisted, burnt metal. It fell down, lifeless and still, at Arjuna's feet.

Arjuna set down Gandiva and sighed. _It had better be over now. _

It was. In an instant, the crowd was on its feet, applauding and stomping and roaring; Ashwatthama was at Arjuna's side, holding up his arm triumphantly; Nakula and Sahadeva were hugging him, and then the crowd was streaming down out of the stands and onto the arena floor, and Arjuna was being lifted up, carried by the crowd chanting his name over and over again toward the far end of the arena--

Drona was standing there on a dias, waiting for him. Arjuna reached up toward his teacher, but Drona grabbed him by the arms, and in one smooth motion pulled him into a tight embrace. For a moment, Arjuna could no longer hear the crowd or the applause or even the sound of his own labored breathing. For one beautiful moment, there was only him and Drona and Drona holding him so deliciously close that Arjuna was afraid he would tear up with joy. Then Drona broke the embrace, but gazed down into Arjuna's eyes and whispered, _I'm proud of you_.

Arjuna thought that he would likely die of joy at that very moment.

Then Ashwatthama was there beside him, hushing the delirious crowd with one simple wave of his hand. "The judges have unanimously decided," he said, "that, in honor of the skill and prowess he displayed during the archery competition--"

The rest of Ashwatthama's speech was drowned out as the crowd erupted into thunderous cheering. Drona slipped a garland of flowers around Arjuna's neck, and the crowd went even wilder. Arjuna grinned and raised his arms to the sky, soaking in their cheers. So this was what glory felt like, Arjuna thought. It felt glorious. Arjuna didn't even care how stupid his armor looked anymore. He looked up and saw his mother and Yudhisthira still in the stands, watching him. Arjuna's mother was crying tears of joy and clutching at Yudhisthira's shoulder; Yudhisthira held her and returned Arjuna's dopey grin helplessly.

Somehow Ashwatthama managed to silence the crowd again, although this time it took several waves of his hands. "It has therefore been decided that Prince Arjuna will be recognized as the champion of the archery competition. If there are any challengers left who wish to test their skill against our prince, let them speak now, or be forever silent."

And for a moment, the crowd was silent. Until the sound of someone loudly slapping his forearm suddenly echoed throughout the arena, as sudden and sharp as a crack of thunder.

"I will challenge the prince," a voice said.

* * *

XVII.

Every head in the crowd turned toward the entrance to the arena, where a tall, dark-skinned man stood. His hair was wrapped in a scarf and a pair of golden earrings hung from his earlobes. He was dressed in a simple jacket, trouser, and boots. He looked, Arjuna thought, like a commoner. Not at all like the handsome, ornamented princes who had been competing in the arena all day.

Someone in the crowd laughed. But everybody else seemed too stunned at the audacity of this commoner to say anything.

Ashwatthama looked the challenger up and down. "Where is your weapon?" Ashwatthama asked.

"Here," the challenger said, and a bow woven from arcs of white-hot fire suddenly sprang into existence in his hands.

The crowd fell back and gasped. It was a devaweapon, which meant that its wielder was a devakin. Which meant that he must not have been a commoner after all, since devakin were never born to commoners.

Arjuna looked to Drona, who was glowering at the newcomer with his lips tightly pursed. But Ashwatthama, with shadows from the fire of the challenger's bow flickering over his face, nodded solemnly. "Very well," he said. Then he turned to the crowd and commanded, "Clear the arena floor! Make way for the challenger!" He quickly looked down at Nakula and Sahadeva, who were standing just below the dias upon which Arjuna stood. "Do you have enough drones left for a second round?"

The twins looked at each other. "Yes," Nakula said. "But we can't guarantee that they'll behave the same way. We programmed them with an evolving intelligence. It will be even more difficult for this guy, the second time around."

"It's a good thing we built more than one Mister Piggy, though," Sahadeva said.

The crowd dispersed from the arena floor and back into the stands. Attendants rushed out to the arena, smoothing out the dirt that had been disturbed by Arjuna's battle, thawing the frozen ground with heat-dryers, freeing the trapped ground-monsters so that they could burrow back into their dwellings. Drona and Arjuna and Ashwatthama stepped back, but did not step down, from the victory dias. Arjuna watched the newcomer take his place in the center of the arena as the stage around him was reset. Arjuna swallowed and fingered the flowers around his neck, nervously. Suddenly, the bright sunlight pouring down upon him, which he had so successfully ignored during the previous battle, seemed hot and stiffling. Arjuna fought against the nausea rising in his throat.

Nakula and Sahadeva took their places in the shelter at the opposite end of the arena. Nakula gave Ashwatthama a signal with his raised fist, and Ashwatthama turned to the challenger and said, "Are you ready?"

"Yes." The challenger turned his eyes toward Arjuna and said, "Anything that this prince could do, I will do quicker, better, and more gracefully."

Arjuna felt his nervousness slowly being replaced by something new. It was anger.

"Watch me," the challenger said, his golden earrings gleaming in the bright sunlight. And then the drones were upon him.

They were faster this time, and there were more of them, moving in complicated patterns; but the challenger stood his ground, cutting them all down with a hail of fiery arrows, never once needing to dodge or duck from a single blast of laser fire. The challenger whispered a mantra under his breath, and a hundred drones combusted in a flash of ash and dust. The ground-robots erupted from beneath the challenger's feet, but he burned them all instantly with walls of flame formed by his hundreds of fiery arrows.

Arjuna stared at him, his fists clenched, his shoulders tensing. The crowd around him was silent, in awe. _This can't be happening,_ Arjuna thought, watching as the challenger effortlessly cut down another hoard of drones, without taking the laser blasts to the knee and shoulder that Arjuna had suffered. _But - But I'm the greatest archer in the world! ME! _Arjuna could begin to feel panic clutching at his chest as he watched the challenger shoot down the three whirling drones that had shot hundreds of stepclicks up into the air, without missing the one that Arjuna had missed. _I'm the Great Warrior! I'm the champion of Kuru! Mr. Drona PROMISED me that nobody would ever beat me! _

The mechanical boar roared as it rumbled out of the back of the arena.

_This was supposed to me MY moment! MY day!_

The challenger dropped to one knee and took aim with his bow.

_I was going to prove to everyone that I was the best! _Arjuna looked over at Drona, whose lips were still pursed, a frown wrinkling his forehead. _To prove that my teacher was the greatest teacher! To bring honor to my family!_

The mechanical boar breathed a burst of fire. The challenger shot his arrows into the boar's mouth. The first arrow erupted through the back of the boar's neck; the second arrow split clean through the center of the first; the third arrow split the second; the fourth arrow split the third; and the fifth arrow split the fourth clean in half. The boar shivered, shuddered, and fell dead.

And then the crowd was on its feet, wild with applause and joyous cheers.

* * *

XVIII.

Neither Yudhisthira nor his mother stood up as the crowd around them erupted into a standing ovation. Yudhisthira glanced over at his mother, who looked pale and drawn. Then Yudhisthira glanced down at Arjuna, still standing on the champion's dias and clutching at the flowers around his neck, an ugly look on his face. Yudhisthira shuddered. He had seen that same look on Duryodhana's face, once many years ago, the day that Bhima had challenged him to a duel in the palace gardens – and had won .

"Oh, my," Gandhari said, clutching her hands tightly in her lap. "Who is that man down there, anyway?"

"I think," Yudhisthira said, watching Ashwatthama wave his hand for silence, "that we're about to find out."

* * *

XVIX.

Ashwatthama waved the crowd to silence. Arjuna watched Ashwatthama's back as he stood and addressed the challenger standing below him. "You have indeed completed all of the tasks that Prince Arjuna completed," he said calmly, "and have done so in a... a superior fashion."

Arjuna looked down to the far end of the arena, where Nakula was staring at the stranger with his jaw hanging open, and Sahadeva was frowning into space and digging his nails into the ground beneath him.

"Which means," Ashwatthama said slowly, "that since you have indeed challenged and surpassed our champion, you are..." Ashwatthama trailed off, as if unable to continue. He turned his head, and gave Arjuna a long, sorrowful look. Arjuna shook his head and mouthed _No, _but Ashwatthama turned away from him and told the stranger, "You are our new champion."

"But first!" Drona cut in quickly, stepping forward and pushing his son aside before the crowd could erupt into either applause or jeering, "Before you rob our prince of his champion title, you must at least tell us who you are, Stranger."

The challenger nodded slowly, and his bow vanished from his hands. "I am Karna," he said. "I come from Anga."

Arjuna clutched at the flowers around his neck more tightly. He knew that there was no royalty on Anga.

Drona scoffed. "I care not for your name," he said. "I demand to know _who you are_, Karna. Of what is your family?"

For a moment, Karna's severe face broke into a small smile. "My family is here," he said. A young woman stepped out of the crowd and walked toward him, a wide-eyed toddler held in her arms. She strode happily toward Karna, who held out his arms to receive her. Karna wrapped his arms around his wife and took the toddler in his arms, looking up at Drona and saying, "This is my wife and son."

Arjuna eyed them carefully. Karna's wife was wearing a summer dress and a scarf around her neck, but she had no jewels on her arms or neck and no ornamentation in her hair; surely she could not be royalty. Karna's son was wearing overalls and a summer jacket and was busy staring at the world around him with wide, silent eyes; but he had none of the rings or fine clothes that marked a prince.

Drona shook his head. "No," he said, "I care not for your wife or your son. Who are your parents, Karna? Where do you come from? It is our right to know the lineage of our new champion."

Karna fell silent, biting his lip and frowning.

"Who are your parents?" Drona demanded again.

Karna trembled and clutched his son, but did not answer.

This time Bhisma rose from his seat across the arena and demanded in a booming voice, "If you will not tell us your origins, Challenger, then we will not deprive our prince of his rightful title. We cannot crown an unknown man as our champion."

The crowd began whispering among itself. Karna looked down at his feet for a long time, while his wife placed her hand on his shoulder and seemed to be imploring him silently. Finally, Karna nodded, slowly. Then he looked up at Drona and said, "My parents are here."

Slowly, a portion of the crowd in the stands began to stir. And then emerging from the bottom of the stands came an elderly woman, standing tall and proud with her long gray hair swept behind her neck, leading a stooped, shivering old man by the hand. Karna gently handed his son back over to his wife, then strode toward his parents. He took his trembling father's hand gently, leading him slowly across the arena floor. "These are my parents," Karna said proudly, wrapping one arm affectionately around his father's shoulders as his mother stood beside him, her chin raised defiantly toward Drona. "This is my father, Adiratha, and my mother--"

"Adiratha?" Bhisma interrupted, from across the arena. "The weaponsmith from Anga?!"

"Yes," Karna said.

"You," Drona said angrily, pointing one accusing finger at Karna, "are the son _of a weaponsmith?!_"

"Yes," Karna said again.

"Outrageous!" Drona snarled. "It is a sin for a weaponsmith to ever use a weapon!"

Karna opened his mouth to say something else, but his voice was drowned out in a wave of jeering and booing that erupted from the crowd. Arjuna stood back and watched as the crowd began calling names and throwing crumpled programs and food wrappers onto the arena floor. "Sinner!" they called out. "Liar! Cheater!"

Karna's wife cried out in fear and she clutched her crying son to her chest. Karna tried to shield his parents, but crumpled programs and other pieces of trash kept striking at them. "Stop it," Ashwatthama cried out frantically, pushing himself out in front of Drona, "_Stop it!_" The crowd slowly stopped hissing and throwing things. However, Ashwatthama glared down at Karna and said, "I am sorry, but it is unacceptable for a weaponsmith to use a weapon, and for a commoner to challenge a prince. You have sinned today, Karna, and for that, you must not be crowned as our champion."

"Sinned?!" Karna challenged Ashwatthama, angrily. "You asked if there was any person with skill great enough to challenge your prince, and I proved - through fair means - that there is. What, then was my sin?!"

"You are a weaponsmith and must never--"

"Enough!" Karna cried out. "What does it matter to whom I was born?!"

"Yes," Duryodhana said, striding across the arena floor toward Karna, "what does it matter?"

Everyone turned toward Duryodhana, who looked royal and resplendent in his ceremonial armor. Arjuna blinked. He had not been aware that Duryodhana had been among the crowd, or even that Duryodhana had ever changed out of his fencing uniform. Duryodhana strode up to Karna, shot his usual charismatic grin at Karna's parents, then quickly made his face grow solemn as he turned to stare up toward Ashwatthama. "You are asking foolish questions," he reprimanded Ashwatthama. "What does it matter where Karna came from, or to whom he was born? A man is like a river. His origins may be obscured or difficult to determine, but that does not prevent him from flowing clear and strong as you know him now. Yes," Duryodhana said, nodding to himself, "how a man is born is not what matters. What matters is the type of man that he becomes, no matter what the circumstances of his birth. This man," he went on, turning toward Karna, "has challenged and defeated Arjuna today. Should he not then be our champion?"

Arjuna silently wondered which book or poem Duryodhana had cribbed that river metaphor from.

"He didn't challenge the prince," Drona said, quickly. "This Karna only completed a test identical to the one that Arjuna completed. This does not prove that he is a superior archer to Arjuna. The only way to determine as such would be to have both of them compete against each other directly. In a duel, with their bows."

"Then let us duel!" Karna shouted. "I hereby challenge Prince Arjuna to a duel!"

Arjuna set his jaw and stepped forward, Gandiva tingling unseen beneath his fingertips. But Drona stayed him with a hand on his shoulder, and shook his head, saying, "No. Only a prince may ever challenge another prince to a duel. But you, Karna, are no prince."

Arjuna watched Karna clench his fists and seethe with fury at this humiliation. But Duryodhana nodded to himself and said, "Very well, then." He turned to Karna, and placed his hands upon Karna's head. "I crown you, Karna," he said, "as the King of Agna, as it is my authority as Kuru's Crown Prince to do so. You will rule Anga as a regent beneath my throne." He pulled his hands away from Karna's head and turned toward Drona. "There. Karna is a king now. He is royalty of an equal rank to Arjuna. This makes it acceptable for them to duel, doesn't it?"

Drona seemed about to retort, but he was cut off by a booming, thunderous laugh from among the stands. Arjuna turned and saw Bhima standing among the crowd, sneering down at Karna. "That man is no king!" he called out. "Even if you call a fish a stallion, it's still just a damn fish." He looked squarely down at Drona. "This arrogant son of a weaponsmith is not fit to challenge Arjuna. He is in no way Arjuna's equal."

"No," Duryodhana retorted angrily, "Karna has just proven that he is in every way Arjuna's superior!"

The crowd began to murmur loudly among itself, debating. Ashwatthama looked up at his father, helplessly. Drona looked to the left, then to the right, then back at Arjuna. Arjuna stood, unsure of what to say or do. But then Drona set his jaw and turned back toward Karna and said, with one finger pointing at the sun setting over the lip of the arena, "Look! The sun is setting." He lowered his hand slowly, a grim smile on his face. "The traditional rules of this contest are clear. All competition is to cease when the sun sets. Since the contest is now over and Karna has not yet proven himself superior to Arjuna in a duel, then Prince Arjuna remains our champion."

The crowd erupted, but this time not in entirely in cheers. Some cheered and called Arjuna's name, but others jeered, others hissed, and others stomped their feet and chanted Karna's name. Arjuna swallowed. Whatever Duryodhana had done, he had certainly managed to divide the crowd. Drona took Arjuna's shoulder and silently steered him off the dias. "Come," he said. "You've won."

But Arjuna turned and glanced over his shoulder, at Duryodhana and Karna standing below the dias. Karna had grasped Duryodhana's arms and was smiling warmly at him, saying something or other. Arjuna couldn't hear them. But his gaze wondered over to Duryodhana, who was grinning back at Karna and not paying any attention to Arjuna whatsoever.

_Everyone's a user, Arjuna._

Arjuna clutched at the flowers around his neck and hunched his shoulders, walking as close to Drona as he possibly could. He tasted bitterness in his mouth, and something else, too - a new something. An ugly something. Arjuna shuddered. It was hatred. He wasn't entirely sure, however, who exactly his hatred was meant for.

* * *

To be continued.


	11. Interlude: Karna II

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: KARNA II

* * *

Karna grasped Prince Duryodhana's arms as the crowd roared around them, as Prince Arjuna was led out of the arena to the accompaniment of equal parts cheering and jeering, and said, "Thank you."

Duryodhana shook his head. "I deserve no thanks--"

"No," Karna said, vehemently, "you do. What can I ever do to repay you?"

Prince Duryodhana smiled at him, a lovely, perfect, self-effacing, and obviously well-rehearsed smile that Karna could tell was often used to soften foreign dignitaries and make ladies go weak in the knees. Just because it was well-rehearsed, however, did not mean that it wasn't genuine. "All I could ask for," Duryodhana said, "is your friendship."

Karna nodded. "It is done."

* * *

II.

"We're almost done cleaning out the west wing," Yuyutsu said, slipping a stylus behind his ear as he used his finger to check off another item on the electronic reader he was holding. "There's a children's nursery there that would be perfect for Vrishasena."

Shrutakiirti bounced Vrishasena absently on her hip and looked at her husband and said again, "Do you ever wake up in the morning and think that all of this is insane?"

"Yes," Karna said, tilting his head to look up at the mural covering the ceiling above him, which was crawling with uniformed servants who were laboriously scrubbing it back into its previous luster. This mansion, which hundreds of years ago had been occupied by Anga's dukes and duchesses but had been abandoned for decades, was now his. It sat like a resplendent jewel in the midst of its own dome, surrounded by carefully cultivated lawns and woodlands, complete with an artificial river cutting through the middle of it.

And now it belonged to Karna.

"We're having linens and towels and curtains shipped up from Hastinapura this afternoon," Yuyutsu went on, leading Karna and Shrutakiirti through the opulent hallways of the mansion and towards the outdoor courtyard in the center of the complex. "They'll be arriving for your inspection in three hours," Yuyutsu said, turning toward Shrutakiirti.

"Inspection?"

"You are the lady of the house, Your Highness."

"And yet I want to laugh every time you call me that."

They stepped through a glass door and into the courtyard, lined with fragrant flowers and trees heavy with fruit. Karna looked up at the black sky beyond the dome above him, and sighed. He already missed the sunlight that had touched his bare skin and tickled his hair when he had been on Kuru's surface.

"If there's anything you need," Yuyutsu said, "you have my personal comm number. I am at your service." He bowed low to Karna and Shrutakiirti. Vrishasena, held in his mother's arms, drooled and wiped his lip with his sticky hands.

Karna wasn't sure that he would ever get used to people bowing to him like that. Not merely as a gesture of politeness, but as a gesture of true subservience.

Yuyutsu straightened up. He frowned, listening to something coming from the comm unit he wore over one of his ears. "The silver dining set," he sighed, to nobody in particular, and then quickly stepped back into the house and vanished.

Shrutakiirti looked at her husband and said again, "This is _insane._"

Karna shook his head. "No, it's..." He trailed off, as if unsure how to continue. "It's good for my father. He can finally retire, now. My mother, too."

"But look at you and me," Shrutakiirti said, clutching her son tightly and walking over toward a stone bench in the middle of the courtyard. She sat down upon it, wearily. "We're not a king and queen." Her neck moles stood out against her dark skin, tinted odd colors beneath the artificial lighting that created Anga's artificial days. "At least, I'm not a queen." She looked up at Karna and said, "I always knew that you were born for something great, though."

Karna sat down beside her and touched the back of her neck. "You were always a queen to me," he said. "Is it wrong that the rest of the world should see you as such?"

Shrutakiirti shook her head, and looked down at Vrishasena, who was sitting in her lap, his face scrunched up in a frown of effort. "Your son," she said, "_the prince_, has, I believe, just made a royal mess inside his royal undergarments. He needs a change."

Karna reached out for Vrishasena, then paused. "Wait a minute," he said.

"Karna, he's about three seconds away from bawling--"

"No, I mean..." Karna pulled his comm out of his shirt pocket and said, "You and I have _servants _to do these sorts of things for us now."

Shrutakiirti hesitated. "I'm not sure I like the idea of some stranger's hands all over my son's--"

"You and I will never have to change another diaper again."

Shrutakiirti looked down at her son, and then said, "All right. I'm sold."

* * *

III.

Karna found his father lying in a bed covered in silk sheets, a contented smile on his face. A pair of nurses were clearing away the remains of his lunch from the table beside his bed. "Much better than a public hospital," Karna's father said, a smile on his trembling lips. "I could get used to this." He looked up at Karna and asked, "Where are Shrutakiirti and Vrishasena?"

"Shrutakiirti is _inspecting linens_," Karna said, his voice mirroring the distaste that Shrutakiirti had shown toward the task, "and Vrishasena is napping." He knelt down beside his father's bed and said, "You aren't shaking as badly today."

"The amazing healing powers of luxury." Karna's father reached out and touched Karna's hair, then the golden earring dangling from his right ear, slowly. "You did this old man proud, boy. Although you know," he added, solemnly, "I would have been proud of you even if you had not won yourself a palace and a crown."

"Father--"

Karna's father shook his trembling head, cutting Karna off. "I always knew that you were born a king," he said. "This is your birthright, Karna. Your real parents, whoever they were--"

"_You are my father._"

"Yes." Karna's father stroked his hair, gently. "Forgive an old man, Karna. You have been the greatest joy in my life ever since the moment when I first held you in my arms. You told me many times that you don't think that you deserve any of this." Karna's father gestured, indicating the mansion around them. "But there are times when I wake up in the morning and fear that I never deserved you."

Karna closed his eyes for a moment, silently thanking the gods above that this man _was _his father. Then he opened his eyes and said, solemnly, "It's not just that I don't deserve a palace, it's that I don't need it." He sighed. "No one person needs all of this... _stuff._"

"If you don't want it," Karna's father laughed, "then give it away." Then he paused when he saw his son's eyes suddenly light up. "I was joking, Karna."

"Many good ideas seem like jokes at the time." Karna stood up quickly. "Excuse me a moment."

Adiratha sighed as he watched his son go.

* * *

IV.

Karna rolled up the cuffs of his trousers, slipped off his boots, and waded out into the cold artificial river which cut through the middle of a green field in the center of his property. The crowd of servants that had followed him out to the river stood watching silently, waiting to see what their new king was up to, watching to see what he would do next.

Karna waded farther and farther out, until the clear, rushing water was soaking his trousers up to his knees. He closed his eyes and remembered the years he had spent on Kuru's surface, waking up each morning early enough to shed his clothes and swim nude in the deep river that bordered the dwelling that he had shared with Parashurama, turning his face toward the rising sun and whispering ecstatic prayers as its warm rays bathed his body.

Karna opened his eyes to the dark dome above him. There was no real sun on Anga, at least not in the sense of a sun that could make the sky turn from black to blue. Because there was no sky. There was only a distant white glow sometimes visible through the glass and steel domes that blocked its dangerous rays from ever reaching the fragile humans living beneath them. But there was still the river, at least, and there were still mornings...

Karna whispered a prayer to the sun beneath his breath, then turned to face the crowd of servants lining the edge of the river, watching him expectantly. Right, then. It was time to be a king.

"Listen well!" Karna proclaimed, as the river swirled around his knees. "This will be my first act as your king. With Kuru's sun as my witness, I make this vow!" He held out his arms. "Every morning, at six hundred hours, I will bathe in this river and offer worship to the sun. At that time, should any of my subjects approach me with a request, I will grant it. Whether you ask for my wealth or my power as a man, I will grant it. I will never refuse anyone anything, should they approach me at this time. That is my vow."

The servants on the edge of the river murmured and look at each other nervously, as if unsure whether to believe Karna, or as if unsure if their new king had just lost his mind.

"That is my vow," Karna said, wading up out of the river. He walked, barefoot, across the grassy expanse of his land and back toward the mansion that was his new home, with his servants following silently behind him, one of them carrying his boots.

Karna returned to the mansion to find Shrutakiirti waiting for him, with a length of blue silk held in her hands. She looked down at Karna's bare wet feet and said, "Dare I ask?"

Karna walked up toward her as servants scurried to mop up the puddles he was leaving behind him. He took Shrutakiirti in his arms and said, "I made a vow to the sun."

"Good for you, darling." She touched his cheek with one hand wrapped in blue silk. "Like it?" she asked.

"Mmm, yes."

"Good, because it's for our bed."

"I vowed to give away anything anyone requested of me," Karna blurted out. "When I pray in the river every morning."

Shrutakiirti kissed him on the cheek. "I knew you were crazy when I married you."

"I'm serious..."

"I know you are." She laughed. "That's why I love you."

* * *

V.

On the first morning, two maids approached Karna as he stood in the river and prayed to the distant sun. They seemed unsure of whether Karna was serious about his vow, or whether they were about to make fools of themselves. "Your Highness," one said, bowing low, "I would only ask of you to raise my hourly wage so that I may be paid equally as my sisters."

"Granted."

The second maid looked slightly aghast at this, as if she hadn't expected her friend's request to be granted. So she swallowed, and said, "Your Highness..."

"Yes?"

"The silver chandelier hanging in the banquet hall," she said, with a daring challenge in her voice, knowing full well that she was making a ridiculous request. "I wish to have it hanging above the dining table in my home."

"Granted."

For a moment, the second maid was silent, shocked. "I don't think my ceiling will even support that thing," she said in a small voice.

"Then I shall give you a new roof," Karna said, wading up out of the river. "Or perhaps even a new house, if it turns out that your current home will be unable to support a stronger roof."

On the second morning, a small crowd of servants had gathered at the river bank, as well as a crowd of citizens from Anga's main domes. An old man asked for medicine. A young married couple asked for a new home. A ten-year-old boy asked for a remote-controlled model of a spaceship.

On the third morning, an even larger crowd had gathered at the river bank. There were even more on the fourth morning.

On the fifth morning, when the next-to-last member of the crowd on the riverbank had had his request granted, Karna turned his head and saw Shrutakiirti standing at the edge of the river. "I have a request," she said.

Karna smiled up at her. "Anything," he said. By now the last of his supplicants had left, leaving Shrutakiirti standing alone on the river bank.

Shrutakiirti looked down at him, her forehead wrinkling as she frowned thoughtfully. "You'll really do anything that I ask of you? Anything?"

"Anything. Such is my vow."

"Good." Shrutakiirti pulled a folded piece of paper from a pocket in her skirts and unfolded it slowly. It was a list - a long list. "Number one," she said. "When my mother comes to visit next week, I want you to tell her that her new hairstyle is _lovely._"

Karna groaned. "A king isn't supposed to lie--"

"But I'm asking you to lie anyway. Convincingly." Shrutakiirti pointed at the distant sun in the black sky above her. "Sacred vow, remember?"

"All right, all right."

"And," Shrutakiirti said, scanning down at her list, "numbers two through eleven are things I've always dreamed of doing in bed with you."

Karna laughed. "Let me see the list, before I agree to anything."

Shrutakiirti slipped off her sandals, held up her skirts, and waded out into the river toward Karna. She handed him the list and said, "You have to agree anyway, right?"

Karna scanned the list quickly, then looked up at Shrutakiirti and asked, "Can we negotiate about number seven?"

Shrutakiirti crossed her arms over her chest, letting her skirts slip down into the river. "No way, Your Highness. Sacred vow, remember?"

Karna looked down at the list again, then back up at his wife. "Where did you even _get _these ideas?" he asked.

"You're stalling." Shrutakiirti placed one finger on Karna's lips. "Just say yes."

Karna still hesitated.

"Look," she said, pointing to number five on her list. "If you do that for me, then I'll do the same for you."

Karna finally nodded.

* * *

VI.

On the sixth morning, Karna waded into the river, sore and stiff from having accomplished items eight and nine on Shrutakiirti's list the previous night, and granted the requests of a new crowd of supplicants. Then he waded out of the river and returned to his mansion as he did every morning, barefoot and dripping, as servants scrambled to clean up behind him.

When Karna strode into the front entrance of his mansion, however, Prince Duryodhana was waiting for him with an entourage of brothers and bodyguards and servants standing at his back, crossing his arms and glowering. Yuyutsu hovered nervously at Duryodhana's shoulder.

"What in the five hells is wrong with you?!" Duryodhana demanded, before Karna could even register that Kuru's crown prince was standing in front of him. "You can't just give away anything to anybody who asks it!"

Karna stood for a moment, still surprised to see Duryodhana standing in front of him. For a moment, his reflex was to bow - but then he decided not to. Instead, he set his jaw and asked Duryodhana, "Why not?"

"Wh-Why not?!" Duryodhana spluttered, unused to being questioned in such a straightforward manner. "Because... Because of the, uh, the economy!" Duryodhana jabbed one finger angrily at Karna. "If you just give away money then it completely screws up the economy!"

"How?" Karna asked.

"How?!" Duryodhana maintained his rage for a moment, then seemed to hesitate. "Because... Because it does!" He threw up his arms in the air. "I'm not the Minister of Economics, I don't have to understand it. But it _does!_"

Karna looked to his left, where a lamp stood on a marble table, and to his right, where a painting hung in a gilded frame, and said, "I don't know, the economy looks fine to me."

"But why," Duryodhana asked, holding out his hands, "would you ever make such an insane vow in the first place?!"

"Because it seemed like the right thing to do," Karna answered solemnly.

For a moment, Duryodhana stared at Karna, looking at him as if Karna had just told him that the sky were green. Then he frowned and turned toward his brothers, his servants, his bodyguards, and Yuyutsu. "Leave us," he said. "I wish to speak to Karna alone."

They left, and Duryodhana stepped closer to Karna. "I trusted you with a kingdom," he said. "I wouldn't have done so if I had known at the time that you were insane."

"I'm fairly sure that I am quite sane, Your Highness." Karna bowed low to Duryodhana. "Although if I have offended you in any way--"

"You haven't _offended _me," Duryodhana said, cutting off Karna with an impatient wave of his hand. "It's not that." He sighed through his nose. "I just wonder how much longer you will be able to keep up with this vow of yours, before you end up homeless and dressed in rags--"

"I trained with and lived as a renunciant for many years, Your Highness," Karna pointed out. "I have no need for material wealth or luxury."

"Maybe not you," Duryodhana said, "But what about your family?"

Karna hesitated.

"What if someone were to ask you for your father's medicine, or for all of your mother's gowns?"

Karna pondered this. "I don't think anybody would ask for that, Your Highness. You'd be surprised how humble these people are. You can trust them not to be greedy."

"No you can't!" Duryodhana burst out. "Maybe you haven't figured this out yet because you're new to the game, but - listen! People _are _greedy and narrow-minded and cruel. As a king, you're supposed to be the one _ruling _these people, not giving in to their every whim. It's your job to protect them from themselves, for their own benefit. The last thing you should be doing is giving them anything that they want!"

Karna stood, staring at Duryodhana, unsure of what to say in the face of his outburst.

Finally Duryodhana looked Karna in the eye and said, "Answer me one question."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"If I came down to the river while you were praying tomorrow, and requested that you to give up this vow of yours, would you?"

Karna looked at Duryodhana for a long, long time. Then he said, slowly, "Your Highness, I somehow doubt that royalty such as yourself would be able to get out of bed at such an early hour."

For a moment, Duryodhana's eyes widened with shock. Karna held his breath, bracing for the worst. Then, slowly, Duryodhana's face began to soften. He looked up and down at Karna, and then, unbelievably, he laughed. Duryodhana brought his hand to his mouth to stifle a small laugh, then he looked back at Karna with a smile in his eyes and said, "Karna, you have just about the biggest set of balls of anyone I've ever met."

"Thank you," Karna said, unsure of what else to say.

"You're determined to keep your word. I like that." Duryodhana reached out and grasped Karna's hand. "But you also made a vow to me, remember?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"So, I'm asking you as a friend. Will you reconsider this vow you made to the sun?"

Karna held Duryodhana's hand tightly, and remembered the prince's brave words that he had spoken on Karna's behalf on the arena floor, taking a stand against the angry crowd, the fascist priest, and his son. Duryodhana was a good man, Karna knew in his heart. A good man, and a good friend. Karna owed him a great debt, for it was Duryodhana who had protected Karna's family, and his honor, on the arena floor. Even when he hadn't had to. Even when it probably would have been safer and less controversial for the prince to not say anything, to not risk his reputation for the sake of a commoner whom he had never met before. Karna looked up at Duryodhana and said, "For you, yes."

"Thank you," Duryodhana said, this time bowing _his_ head to Karna.

"I will reconsider my vow," Karna said, "but not forsake it. Instead, I will lessen its scope. Only one person may approach me with a request each morning." Karna drew his hands away from Duryodhana and clasped them in front of his chest, closing his eyes and saying, "I will pray that the sun understands."

"Karna," Duryodhana said.

Karna opened his eyes.

"Come with me back to the surface," Duryodhana commanded. "I wish to have you in my court. I have need of an advisor who isn't afraid to speak the truth to me."

Karna bowed low. "But, Your Highness, my family--"

"You will see them several days each week," Duryodhana said, quickly. "Your wife seems quite capable of handling affairs in your absence."

"Thank you, Your Highness."

"Come. Now." Duryodhana turned and began striding away. "There's already a shuttle waiting for us."

Karna jogged a few steps to keep up with the prince. "Your Highness--"

"Think nothing of it," Duryodhana said, waving his hand dismissively. "I only wish to have an honest soul standing beside me. That, and a genuine friend. Such are always a rarity for kings."

Karna nodded at this, but Duryodhana did not see him. Karna thought that it was a shame, that such a good man had been born into a life where he could expect so little in the way of honest friends.

* * *

To be continued.


	12. Chapter 06: Dakshina

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER SIX: DAKSHINA

* * *

Arjuna heard the crash of glass shattering and a woman's scream from all the way across the courtyard. He winced and lowered his bow.

Drona squinted and peered into the distance. "I do not believe that you hit the target," he pointed out, dryly.

"No kidding." Arjuna's bow vanished from his hands.

Drona turned toward him sharply. "We're not finished yet."

"Yes we are." Arjuna glowered across the long courtyard, at the target barely visible in the distance. He couldn't hit it. After a month, he still couldn't hit it. And _that commoner_ who had challenged Arjuna in the weapons contest could. "I do not wish to do more today," Arjuna commanded in what he hoped came across as a princely voice.

"But you must do more today. If you would perhaps just concentrate and not let a certain someone get beneath your skin--"

"What's the point?!" Arjuna fumed, stamping his foot angrily. "You promised me that you would make me the greatest archer ever--"

"And I have not fulfilled my promise _yet_." Drona returned Arjuna's glower, utterly unintimidated. "If you are so obsessed with comparing yourself to that son of a weaponsmith, then remember this: you are half his age. Your training is not finished yet. You have a teacher, and he has none. You will surpass him surely and swiftly, if you would just stop acting like a..." Drona paused, and pursed his lips. He frowned for a moment, choosing his words. Then he said, "Like a spoiled teenager."

"You're _my _priest!" Arjuna hissed. "Show some respect for your prince or so help me I'll--"

"Come this way," Drona interrupted, completely ignoring Arjuna's threat. He was already crossing the courtyard, toward an entrance into the palace hallways. "There is something that I wish to show you."

Arjuna swallowed his princely anger and reluctantly followed. _This had better be good_, he thought, glaring at Drona's back. _Because I own you. _Then Arjuna shook his head and remembered that Drupada had once thought the same.

Drona led Arjuna through the lower levels of the palace and out into another garden, where Mr. Dhaumya and Ashwatthama were sitting side-by-side, naked from the waist up, eyes closed and hands resting on their legs, meditating silently on the bank of an artificial creek.

Mr. Dhaumya did not stir, but Ashwatthama turned his head the moment that his father stepped into the courtyard, opened his eyes slowly, and smiled. He stood up and jogged toward them. Arjuna wondered how his friend, who spent all day every day either studying religious texts or sitting still and meditating, could appear so lean and muscular and wiry. Ashwatthama's skin was still pale and unblemished, despite the fact that he had probably been broiling himself beneath the glaring sun for hours. His freckles stood out on his pale cheeks. "Father!" he cried out.

Drona halted himself a step in front of his son. "Have I interrupted something?" he asked.

"No. I knew that you were coming and I was told to answer you." Ashwatthama bowed low in front of his father. The strange blue mark on his forehead gleamed in the morning sunlight. The devakin markings on his back and neck shined beneath a thin layer of sweat. "You have a favor to ask me?"

"Yes." Drona returned his son's bow. "I would like Arjuna to attempt to strike you down."

Arjuna's jaw dropped open when he heard this, but Ashwatthama merely nodded his head and said, "All right." He jogged a distance away from them, down the length of the creek bed away from Mr. Dhaumya, who was still sitting as if oblivious to the world around him. "Is this far enough away?" he called out.

"Farther." Drona turned to Arjuna as his son continued to jog away from them. "Summon your bow," he ordered. "Use any arrow, any astra, that you wish. Aim for his heart, though. There is no other way to harm my son."

Arjuna just stared up at his teacher. Finally, he found his voice. "Are you _crazy?!_" he croaked. "I can't--"

"I do not think that you can, either," Drona said, a sly twinkle in his eye. "My son is more than a match for your bow."

"Is this far enough away?" Ashwatthama called from far down the river bank.

"You want me to shoot at him?!" Arjuna shouted, angry and baffled. "Look at him! He's unarmed and totally defenseless. He's not even wearing a shirt!"

"More than that," Drona continued cheerfully. "My son is sworn never to touch a weapon, and to never commit an act of violence against another human being. And yet," Drona added, smugly, "I believe that you will find that he is far from defenseless. Did you think that I would leave my own son unable to defend himself?"

Arjuna gave Drona a long, long look.

"Do you not trust me?" Drona asked.

Arjuna thought about this. He looked down the length of the creek, to where Ashwatthama was standing, hands dangling at his sides, watching Arjuna expectantly. Arjuna remembered all of the times that he had watched Ashwatthama and his father standing together or speaking together or laughing together, all of the times that he had watched the two of them and felt that familiar stab of jealousy in his heart. Mr. Drona would never care about Arjuna the way that he cared about his own son. And Arjuna knew that Mr. Drona would never, ever do anything to willingly put Ashwatthama in danger.

"All right," Arjuna said in a small voice, as Gandiva flared to life with a crackle of lightning and a spray of rain in his hands. He raised his bow, notching an arrow and squinting down the length of the creek bed. He sighted the deadly point of his arrow between Ashwatthama's left nipple and the center of his chest. "Here goes," he whispered, more as a prayer to Shiva and Indra above than as a warning.

Gandiva's string twanged melodiously, and the arrow went screaming down the length of the creek.

Ashwatthama closed his eyes and serenely folded his hands in front of his chest. The arrow sputtered, flashed, and then winked out of existence before it could strike him.

Arjuna lowered his bow for a moment, startled. "How'd he do that?!"

Drona laughed and said, "Try again."

Arjuna set his chin and raised his bow again. This time an arrow of lightning crackled against his bow string. He let it fly, and Ashwatthama calmly raised one hand and stopped the arrow a mere hair's-breadth in front of his palm. The arrow hovered for a moment in mid-air, then crackled and flashed, dispersing itself harmlessly.

"Try again," Drona repeated. "Do not hold back."

Arjuna let loose three arrows in rapid succession. They seemed to bounce off the air in front of Ashwatthama. Arjuna shot one arrow that became many as it flew down the creek - again, not a single arrow managed to strike Ashwatthama.

Arrows weren't doing any good, so Arjuna grit his teeth and summoned an astra. He whispered the words beneath his breath, and aimed his bow at the ground. He shot an arrow at his feet, and when it struck the ground, the earth beneath him trembled. Ashwatthama finally opened his eyes, showing a bit of surprise - just a bit - as the ground beneath him bucked and heaved. He leapt out of the way moments before sharp, rocky spikes erupted from the ground. But a moment later, the spikes were gone, washed away by a torrent of water that Ashwatthama summoned with his own whispered astra. A weaponless astra, apparently.

Ashwatthama turned his head and said to Arjuna, "You are not the only one with astras."

Arjuna finally lowered his bow, with a sigh of defeat. It vanished from his hands. "All right. I concede." He looked up at Ashwatthama, who was walking back up the creek toward them. "Did you learn that last water-astra from Mr. Dhaumya?"

"No," Drona answered for his son, "he learned it from me." Drona looked down at Arjuna somberly. "We priests know many arts that even royal warriors do not, and we of the Ajagava order know even more. We know every way that there is to defend ourselves - and others - from asuras."

Ashwatthama paused in front of his father, bowed, and then without a word passed by them both, returned to Mr. Dhaumya's side, sat down, and resumed whatever he had been doing previously. Arjuna watched Mr. Drona's eyes following his son for a moment, and tried not to wish that Mr. Drona would sometimes look at _him _with that same warmth in his eyes.

Finally Mr. Drona turned back to Arjuna, and said, "My own father taught me all of the Ajagava order's secrets. I, in turn, was to pass those secrets on to my own son. But Ashwatthama..." Drona's eyes grew heavy, and sad. He fell silent for a moment, and Arjuna didn't know what to say. He was afraid to try to say anything. Then Mr. Drona continued, "Things did not work out as I had planned. The Lord Shiva gave me a son, but my son was forbidden from becoming one of the Ajagava order. Thus I had no one to pass on my father's secrets to." Mr. Drona turned away from Arjuna, gazing off in no direction in particular. "For many years I did not understand the Lord Shiva's designs, I did not understand why... But now I am beginning to." He smiled to himself. "I still have many secrets to teach my son that do not violate his vows of non-violence. You saw some of those today. But I have many more that..." Drona trailed off, opened his eyes, and gazed at Arjuna solemnly. "I will teach them to you," he said.

Arjuna swallowed, nervously.

"All of them," Mr. Drona whispered, his words heavy with promise, heavy with sin. "All of the secrets forbidden to ever pass beyond the Ajagava order's lineage. I will give them all to you, even if you are not my son. Even if my own father has forbidden me from ever committing such a sinful act--"

"No!" Arjuna said, quickly. "You don't have to!"

"I must," Drona countered, calmly. "It is the only way that you will ever surpass that commoner - that commoner sent here by devils to undermine you," he hissed. "I will give you what he does not have. That is all and what I must do for you."

Arjuna was quiet for a long time, unsure of what to say. Finally he looked up at his teacher and said, "Thank you." Although he wasn't entirely sure, yet, whether he meant it or not.

* * *

II.

It was late in the day when Arjuna returned to his own quarters, exhausted. Or rather, he had already taken his leave of Mr. Drona and was in the process of returning to his own quarters - stumbling through the palace hallways, trailed by a handful of bodyguards, rubbing his sore arms and callused hands - when he was rudely interrupted in the middle of his walk.

In fact, he was interrupted by Duryodhana, who suddenly rounded a corner and almost walked right into his cousin. "Arjuna!" he exclaimed, then added impatiently, "Why aren't you watching where you're going?"

Arjuna raised his head angrily toward his cousin, his eyes blazing. He had still not forgiven Duryodhana for turning the crowd against him during the weapons contest over a month ago. He opened his mouth to make a retort which he hoped would be appropriately nasty, but then he hesitated. Arjuna's gaze slid behind Duryodhana's shoulder, his eyes widened, and he turned pale, although two red blooms of anger began to show up on his cheeks. "What," hissed Arjuna in a strangled voice, "is _he _doing here?!"

"Karna is a member of my court," Duryodhana said, stepping around the corner completely to reveal Karna hovering over his shoulder, his face carefully respectful and blank. Arjuna was forced to back up a step. "He has as much a right to be here as you do," Duryodhana said.

For a moment, Arjuna stood with his fists clenched and his throat working silently, like an enraged serpent coiled to strike. Duryodhana sniffed at him. "Really, Arjuna, must you be so childish? I think that you should apologize for insulting both me and a valuable member of my court."

"You _son of a--_"

Karna suddenly stepped in front of Duryodhana, his bow blazing to life with a flash of fire in his eyes. "You arrogant child!" he snarled. "How dare you insult His Highness?!"

"Easily," Arjuna answered, which he knew was a lame answer, but it was hard to concentrate on witty banter when it required most of his concentration to bring Gandiva to life in his hands. It blazed, blue-black thunder-shadow, trying to drown out the white heat of Karna's bow with its dark storm. "If you--"

And then Duryodhana was between both of them. "Drop your bow, you idiot," he hissed at Arjuna. Then he turned to Karna and said gently, placing one hand on Karna's shoulder, "Stand down. This isn't worth a confrontation."

Karna nodded slowly, and his bow vanished. But Arjuna didn't let go of Gandiva. He grit his teeth and stormed wordlessly past Duryodhana and Karna, gripping his bow between his white knuckles the whole while. His bodyguards scrambled to catch up with him.

* * *

III.

Duryodhana bent down and plucked one of the rainbow-colored flowers out of the pond at his feet. He held it up in the evening sunlight, marveling at its colors, its scent, the silky feel of its petals against his hands. "It feels completely real," he said.

"Thank you, Your Highness." Yuyutsu bowed low in gratitude.

"Everything, I mean," Duryodhana said, turning his head to take in the garden around him - the crystalline pond teeming with fish and covered in floating flowers, the bushes heavy with fruit all around him, the clear sky and setting sun above. Birds sang in the distance, and insects buzzed lazily over the pond, carrying pollen from flower to flower. "This is your best work yet."

"Thank you," Yuyutsu repeated again. The two of them were alone in what, moments before, had been Duryodhana's private study - but had now been transformed into an unearthly beautiful outdoor garden. "It is just an illusion," Yuyutsu repeated, humbly.

"I wouldn't be entirely sure of that," Duryodhana said. He bent down and plucked a fruit from a bush. It was like no fruit that he had ever seen before, red and round and covered in a thin translucent skin that he could probably bite right through. He did. "See me right now?" he asked, wiping fruit juice from his mouth. "I should be standing in the middle of my computer desk. But I'm not." He paused, then commented aloud, "I wouldn't want to find out what would happen if you dropped the illusion right now, though."

Yuyutsu made a small, worried sound in the back of the throat. "This is dangerous," he said. He looked at the fruit in Duryodhana's hand and said, "I don't even know what that is or where it came from. I've never seen anything like it before. But I made it." He shivered.

Duryodhana took another bite of the strange fruit non-chalantly. It tasted sweet and rich. He liked it. "What are you worried about?" he asked around a mouthful of skin and pulp. "We're protected by the gods. They gave us this gift, they wouldn't let anything happen to us."

"With all due respect, Your Highness, I have been--"

"--Flying blind?" Duryodhana smirked at Yuyutsu. "So, what?"

Yuyutsu bit his lip nervously, although he seemed unaware that he was doing so. "I have not heard or seen any trace of those shadow-people that you banished, Your Highness, since the night you did so. And I agree with you that they are not to be trusted. But at the same time... I did feel safer when they were there to instruct me--"

"Yuyutsu." Duryodhana popped the last bit of fruit into his mouth. "Don't be such a coward," he snapped. "That's how _they _want you to be."

Yuyutsu winced, stung.

Duryodhana watched him for a moment, then sighed. "Look, I'm sorry. You're not a coward, you just... Just keep working on it, all right?"

"Of course, Your Highness."

"This is a gift from the gods. It's nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of. It's just like… It's just like the astras that some of the Council members can use. That's all. It's not unheard of for humans like us to wield power like this."

But Yuyutsu shook his head. "Astras require the knowledge and recital of sacred words," he said. "Mantras. Spells. But you and I can do things without words. And I know for a fact that a mere astra could never do anything like--"

Duryodhana stepped closer to Yuyutsu and said, "That's enough."

"Right." Yuyutsu closed his eyes, and the illusion vanished. They were once again standing in the center of Duryodhana's study.

Duryodhana glanced over at his computer, and noticed briefly that it had just begun to reboot itself, even though it had been on and running fine when Yuyutsu had activated the illusion. Interesting. Duryodhana stretched his arms above his head and walked over to a chair, where he sat down gratefully. He licked his lips, and tasted Yuyutsu's mystery fruit. Duryodhana rubbed his forehead and wondered if he was yet able to generate such wonders. He would have to try when he was alone, after Yuyutsu had left, he supposed. Duryodhana sometimes resented the fact that Yuyutsu was more advanced than he was in the use of their mutual gift, but then he remembered that Yuyutsu was _his _in the end, so he didn't worry too much about it.

"Your Highness?" Yuyutsu asked.

"Yes. Here." Duryodhana shook his head and sat up. "I have a favor to ask of you."

"Anything."

"Karna," Duryodhana said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "I want you to find out who taught him how to use his bow, and whether that person is still around."

"Your Highness?" Yuyutsu asked again.

"That crazy Panchalan priest is already strengthening Arjuna against me. I can see how his mind works." Duryodhana frowned. "I do not want Karna to grow complacent." Duryodhana also didn't want Karna to keep spending an hour talking on the comm with his father every evening, or bathing naked in the river behind the palace every morning, either. But Duryodhana was beginning to figure out that there was only so much that he could ask Karna to do or not do.

Yuyutsu looked down, and would not meet Duryodhana's eyes. "I do not think that you should speak as if Prince Arjuna were your enemy," Yuyutsu said, quietly.

Duryodhana rose from his seat, quickly. "What was that?" he asked, sharply.

"I--"

"I gave you an order, Yuyutsu. Do you have something to say to me?"

Yuyutsu was quiet for a moment. Then, still not meeting Duryodhana's eyes, he took a deep breath, and said, "No."

"Good. Now leave me."

Yuyutsu left hurriedly, and Duryodhana sank back down in his chair and groaned. His feet hurt. He had been up and about all day, and he had far too much to think about. He was sure that Grandpa Bhisma was still intent on giving Duryodhana's throne to Yudhisthira, and he was sure that his own father was still trying to stop that. But Duryodhana knew that his father and Grandpa Bhisma couldn't play a tug-of-war of wills forever. Duryodhana had to strengthen his own position. He had to...

He had to do _what_, exactly? Prepare to take it by force?

Duryodhana tapped his nose and thought. On his side he had his ice, but that was somewhat useless in the sense that he could never let anyone know that he had it. He had Yuyutsu, but Yuyutsu was still too soft-hearted and hesitant to be trusted completely. Yuyutsu would not disobey Duryodhana, but at the same time he was too cowardly to do the real dirty work that needed to be done. And Duryodhana had Karna, but he was beginning to think that he might have made a mistake in crowning Karna a king in the weapons arena. He had ensured that Karna was not only loyal but indebted to him, sure. But in doing so, he had also lost Arjuna's trust. That was troublesome. Even more troublesome, Duryodhana had also insulted the insane Panchalan priest and his son. That had been a mistake. Duryodhana had eyed the priest's son carefully on more than one occasion. He would have been a powerful ally, and he seemed easy to order around. But he was too enamored of Arjuna...

Duryodhana rubbed his forehead and groaned. _What exactly am I plotting, here? _

He wished he knew.

* * *

IV.

For Arjuna, the following few months passed quickly. Mr. Drona was no longer holding back what he chose to teach Arjuna. Arjuna fell asleep every night with his arms sore from bending his bow and new spells on his lips. Arjuna knew that Mr. Drona was breaking some sort of sacred rule by passing these things on to one who was not his own son, but Arjuna _liked _to think about that, as guilty as it made him feel. It meant that Mr. Drona loved him very much. It meant that he was _like _Mr. Drona's son.

And the months finally bled into years. Arjuna studied and trained, relentlessly. He learned how to fight with his hands and feet, and also with fire, and water, and wind, and lightning.

It was before sunrise the morning that Arjuna and Ashwatthama were sitting on top of a cliff overlooking the Ganga River behind the palace, when Arjuna tried out the river astra for the first time. He whispered the right words - what he remembered as the right words – and shot an arrow into the ground in front of him. The ground opened up beneath his feet, and a stream of gurgling, brown water erupted from beneath the dirt and grass, slopped over the edge of the cliff, and splashed down into the river below.

"Close," Ashwatthama said, watching the stream running in front of them, vanishing over the edge of the cliff. "The water's supposed to be pure, though."

Arjuna watched the brackish water gurgling past his feet and said, "I'll get it right next time."

"I think--" Ashwatthama began, then cut himself off when he heard the sound of yelling below. He and Arjuna leaned over the edge of the cliff, and Arjuna immediately clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle his own laughter.

Karna was glaring up at them both, as he stood naked and waist-deep in the river. A group of maids and servants come to ask him for his morning favor stood horrified on the river-bank, watching him as he stared up at the edge of the cliff above. The rising sun gleamed off his gold earrings. He wiped a handful of filthy water from his face and snarled up at the cliff, "_You two--_"

"Sorry!" Ashwatthama said quickly, nearly tripping over himself to apologize, as beside him, Arjuna doubled over and clapped both hands over his mouth to keep from bursting into laughter. "We're sorry! We forgot--"

"Children," Karna spat out the word. He turned away from the cliff, and splashed clear river-water over his soiled hair and shoulders. "I don't have time to deal with the small-minded bullying of a pair of children--"

"_I'm not a child!_" Arjuna suddenly shouted, clutching the edge of the cliff, all traces of laughter gone from his voice.

But Karna did not respond. He had turned his back to the cliff, and was facing the rising sun, his hands clasped in prayer. On the river-bank, his entourage was likewise bowing before the sun and turning their backs to Arjuna.

Arjuna fumed silently. Ashwatthama grasped Arjuna's arm and pulled him away from the edge of the cliff. "Come on," Ashwatthama said. "Father is waiting for us."

"I can't stand it," Arjuna hissed as he allowed Ashwatthama to lead him back toward the palace. "I can't stand having _him _around. He thinks he's _so much better _than me--"

"Your Highness," Ashwatthama said, carefully, "according to the results of the archery competition, he is the better archer."

"No he's not!" Arjuna shouted, pulling his arm angrily away from Ashwatthama. "Not, um, not anymore! We just need a re-match!"

Ashwatthama looked at Arjuna sadly. "Your Highness, rage and jealousy are unbefitting a soul such as yours."

Arjuna stared at Ashwatthama. "Why are you getting all mystical on me all of a sudden?"

"It's not mysticism," Ashwatthama said patiently, folding his hands in front of him. "It's called me getting tired of listening to you pout all the time and wishing that you would act your age." He closed his eyes serenely. "That's all."

"I could have you beheaded for giving me lip."

Ashwatthama opened one eye and peered at Arjuna slyly. "Some friend you are."

Arjuna tapped his foot on the grass beneath him and frowned. "It doesn't matter anymore," he said, finally. "I know I'm stronger than that Karna. I'm stronger than anybody."

"And how do you know that?" Ashwatthama asked, curiously.

"Because _I _have the strongest astra now," Arjuna bragged. "The one so strong that only members of the Ajagava order are supposed to know it."

A shadow crossed Ashwatthama's face. Then his eyes widened. "You--"

"Mmm-hmm. I know the _brahmastra._ I've known it for a month now. Nobody can ever beat me in a match again." Arjuna threw back his head and laughed. "I'd like to see the look on that Karna's face when he--"

"I didn't know that Father taught you the _brahmastra,_" Ashwatthama suddenly said.

Arjuna turned and looked quickly at his friend, but Ashwatthama's face was kept carefully blank. "Nobody is really supposed to know," Arjuna said quickly, "Because it's so, um, so forbidden, I guess. But I would have thought that..." Arjuna trailed off, unsure how to finish.

Ashwatthama said nothing for a long, long moment. Then he turned his head away from Arjuna and said, "Then I'm sure that Father warned you not to go around broadcasting the fact that you know the _brahmastra._"

"He did..."

"Then you should _be more careful._"

Arjuna was taken aback for a moment, then he said cheerfully, "But just now, that was all right. It's all right for you to know because you already--"

"I don't."

Arjuna fell silent again, then asked, "What?"

"I don't know the _brahmastra_," Ashwatthama said. He was still looking away from Arjuna, keeping his voice neutral. "I can't. The _brahmastra _is a weapon, and I am forbidden to know or touch weapons."

Arjuna fell silent. He didn't understand why Ashwatthama was suddenly so upset. The _brahmastra _didn't seem like that big of a deal to Arjuna. Mr. Drona had taught him the words, and then had told him that the _brahmastra _was so powerful that he was never supposed to even _use _it in the first place. Which meant that in the end, the whole thing amounted to nothing more than whole lot of silliness, in Arjuna's opinion. What was the point of a mantra so powerful that he could never even use it? Mr. Drona had told him that the _brahmastra _was a deterrent, but then again, not much of a deterrent if he wasn't supposed to tell anybody that he knew it in the first place. Doubly silly. Absolutely nothing worth getting upset about.

"It's just words," Arjuna said, trying to cheer Ashwatthama up.

"The _brahmastra_ is not just words," Ashwatthama said, solemnly. His eyes were sorrowful, for some reason that Arjuna could not fathom. Finally, Ashwatthama shook his head, and smiled again. "Sorry," he said. "Forget I said anything. Should we go find Father?"

Arjuna thought that Ashwatthama's smile seemed forced, but didn't say anything about it. "Sure," he said. He took Ashwatthama's hand, and the two of them headed back toward the palace.

* * *

V.

Mr. Dhaumya found them first. "Thank the gods I found you," he said as soon as he spotted Ashwatthama inside a palace hallway. "Take these," he said, dumping an armful of sacred sticks and several packs of firestarting gel into Ashwatthama's arms. "Prince Sama is demanding a sacrifice to Varuna _now _so that he can go windsurfing this afternoon--"

"Without you?" Ashwatthama asked, nervously. "I've never done one of these alone--"

"You'll be fine. Lord Bhisma has summoned me and I have to go." Dhaumya pulled a comm unit out of his robes and dropped it on top of the pile in Ashwatthama's arms. "For some reason, this thing shorted out when I had an audience with Prince Duryodhana last night. Would you mind running it to the smiths--?"

"Of course not." Ashwatthama turned and grinned at Arjuna. "No indignity is too great for the apprentice of the royal priest."

Mr. Dhaumya didn't hear this, for he was already gone. "My brother Nakula," Arjuna said, pulling the comm unit off the top of Ashwatthama's pile, "could fix this for you."

"Thanks, but I don't think Mr. Dhaumya wants a comm unit that shoot lasers or is dangerously radioactive. Besides, you're a prince. You shouldn't be running errands."

Arjuna returned the comm to its precarious position, balanced between two sacred sticks. "Just trying to help," he said.

"Thank you," Ashwatthama repeated, and then he was off in another direction. That left Arjuna alone to go find Mr. Drona.

When Arjuna did find Mr. Drona, however, Mr. Drona had some travel luggage packed and waiting for him. "This is yours," he said, handing the luggage handle over to Arjuna. "And these," he said, reaching into his coat to produce a small envelope. Arjuna took the envelope and opened it, pulling out two printed slips of paper. "What...?" he asked, bewildered.

"Those are commercial spaceflight tickets," Mr. Drona whispered, pulling Arjuna aside. He glanced to the left and to the right, making sure that nobody was around or listening, then lowered his face to Arjuna's eye-level. "Your ship leaves at midnight tonight. I have a transport arranged, waiting for you in the sublevels here."

"What?"

"You have to leave right away. I told your mother that I was sending you on a pilgrimage into the woods. You have sixteen days before she misses you."

"What?"

"It is time," Drona said, placing his hands on Arjuna's shoulders, "for you to pay your _dakshina _to me."

* * *

VI.

"We're not supposed to be doing this in a temple, of all places," Duryodhana pointed out, smearing more sunblock onto Sama's back.

"The gods wouldn't want me to get skin cancer, you know," Sama pointed out. Duryodhana finished, and Sama slipped back on his shirt as a servant scurried forward to wash off Duryodhana's hands. "It's my sacrifice, though. You don't have to be here."

"I make it a habit not to miss out on any sacrifice made by my family," Duryodhana said. _Plus, the more of these damn things I attend, the more likely that one of these days some god or another is going to pop on down and maybe explain to me why in the five hells I can use maya. Or whatever it is. _"Where is Mr. Dhaumya? He's late--"

"Mr. Dhaumya commed ten minutes ago, he sent Ashwatthama in his place."

Duryodhana raised his eyebrows. Finally, an opportunity to see Ashwatthama without his father or Mr. Dhaumya hanging around and getting in the way. This would be interesting.

As if on cue, Ashwatthama suddenly appeared, struggling to hold on to the sacred sticks and firestarting gel piled in his arms. "Sorry I'm late," he mumbled as he handed his supplies off to another of Mr. Dhaumya's younger aides, and began setting up the temple space for a sacrifice. He paused briefly to bow to Duryodhana and Sama. "Your Highnesses," he said.

"Be at peace, Ashwatthama," Duryodhana said importantly. Ashwatthama straightened out of his bow, nodded, and then went back to work.

Duryodhana watched Ashwatthama building the base of the sacred fire, watched the way that his devakin markings curled up the back of his neck, the way that his freckles stood out in sharp contrast to his pale skin, the way that said freckles somehow managed to accent and compliment his dark priestly robes. The curious blue mark on his forehead shone brilliantly in the strange light of the temple.

He was hiding it well, but something was troubling Ashwatthama's heart. Duryodhana could tell. He could _smell _it.

Curiouser and curiouser. Duryodhana grinned to himself as he watched Ashwatthama work.

* * *

VII.

"Dakshina?" Arjuna asked, tasting the unfamiliar word in his mouth.

Drona stared at him. "You do know what your _dakshina_ is, don't you?"

Arjuna shook his head, slowly.

Drona sighed melodramatically. "Your payment, Arjuna. When a student accepts a priest for a teacher, that priest has the right to demand a _dakshina_ after he has taught the student everything that he can." Drona tapped Arjuna's nose. "We are not finished," he said, his usual accent thick on his words. "I have more to teach you, but due to the nature of your mission and the timing, this is the only time that--"

"I don't think that's how it works on Kuru," Arjuna pointed out. "I've never heard of a _dakshina _before."

"But such is the custom on Panchala," Drona pushed forward, stubbornly. "It is not my fault if you and your entire civilization were ignorant of this. I assumed that you knew."

"So..." Arjuna looked up at his teacher carefully. "That time that I saved your life? That doesn't count as payment?"

Drona laughed. "You are adorable, little prince," he said, pinching Arjuna's cheek. "But in all seriousness, you are not getting out of this."

Arjuna looked down at the tickets in his hand. "Kampilya?" he gasped. "You're sending me to Kampilya?! That's Panchala's capital!"

"Yes," Drona said. "Listen carefully. There is someone that I trust waiting to transport you to the hangars beyond Hastinapura. Once there, you will be in public, and must take precautions. Wear as much clothing as you can. Do not let your devakin markings show. Cover your face and head as much as possible. Use the mantra I taught you, the one that makes you inconspicuous. _You must not be recognized._" He pulled more documents out of his coat - a plastic laminated card, some official-looking documents printed in a script used nowhere on Kuru, and some money, the likes of which Arjuna had never seen before. "These are yours," he said. "Even though counterfeit, they will stand up to inspection."

Arjuna looked down at the laminated card. It was an identity marker, with his picture on it, but a name that was not his. "Where did you get this?!" he asked.

"I know the right people."

"But when people see this picture, they'll recognize me--"

"Not if you cloud their senses. Use your mantra." Drona reached into his coat one last time. "Almost forgot," he said, pulling out a long, sharp-looking needle. "Give me your wrist--"

Arjuna swallowed, but held out his wrist. Drona slid the needle into the soft flesh on top of the back of Arjuna's hand. Arjuna winced but said nothing. "This," Drona said as he pulled out the needle, "will get you past the bioscanners ringing Drupada's palace--"

"Palace?!" Arjuna clutched at the piles of papers in his hands. "You're sending me to Drupada's palace?! What do you want me to do?!"

Drona looked at Arjuna solemnly. "I wish for you to bring Drupada here, so that I may speak to him. I wish for you to accomplish this without harming him. That is the _dakshina _that I ask of you."

For a moment, Arjuna had no idea what to say. His throat worked, but no words came out. Finally, he squeaked, "But the guards--"

"You are more than a match for them."

"Drupada's sons--"

"Are on a diplomatic mission to Madra, both of them. Hence this is the only time that I may send you."

"If you want to talk to him so badly, why not just _ask _him--"

"I did," Drona said, sharply. "Many times. While he was here for the tournament. He refused to listen to me even for a moment. He refused to even look at me." For a moment, Drona fell silent, and Arjuna could not read his face. Then he grasped Arjuna's shoulders and whispered fiercely, "_Please._ All I want is to speak to him again. This is the only way. I would not ask such a thing of you if I didn't..." He trailed off, and Arjuna felt his hands tremble ever so slightly.

Arjuna was frightened. He had never seen Drona like this before. For a moment, he looked as old as he truly was, and frail. Then Arjuna realized that he couldn't stand to see Drona looking like that, not for another moment. So Arjuna nodded, hoping that he looked braver than he felt. "I will," he said, grasping Drona's hands that were in turn his own shoulders. "I will do this, for you." _Even if it were not my dakshina, I would do this for you. You know that, right? Please know that._

"Thank you," Drona said, having recovered himself. He slowly let of Arjuna's shoulders. He paused for a moment, gazing into Arjuna's face, but again, Arjuna couldn't tell what he was thinking, what he was searching for. Then, apparently satisfied, Drona straightened up and whispered again, "Remember, I told your mother you are on a pilgrimage in the forest. You have sixteen days. Do not attempt to contact me or anyone on Kuru during that time." He handed the handle of the luggage over to Arjuna again, then took his other hand. "Quickly," he said, pulling Arjuna back into a deserted hallway. "Your ride is waiting for you."

Arjuna set his jaw and followed Mr. Drona, squeezing his hand tightly.

* * *

VIII.

Sama was already gone, and Ashwatthama's aides were cleaning up the remains of the sacrifice, when Duryodhana was finally able to pull Ashwatthama aside. "I need you this afternoon," he said.

Ashwatthama bowed to Duryodhana and said, "Your Highness, Mr. Dhaumya has given me an important errand--"

"I'll get someone else to do it for you." Duryodhana grasped Ashwatthama's arm and began pulling him toward where he knew his chauffer and hoverer were waiting. "This is important."

"What is it?" Ashwatthama asked, stumbling along.

"Just tea," Duryodhana said quickly, "but that's important." He turned his head and eyed Ashwatthama carefully. "Since you're going to become my family's priest sooner rather than later, I figured it was about time you and I sat down and talked."

Ashwatthama was giving Duryodhana a funny look. Duryodhana could guess what he was thinking. Mr. Dhaumya was Duryodhana's priest right now, but Duryodhana would never sit down just to tea and talk with him.

"Just for a few moments," Duryodhana said, maneuvering Ashwatthama into the back seat of his hoverer. "I have some, ah... Some spiritual matters that I want to discuss with you."

"Oh. That's all right, then." Ashwatthama folded his hands in his lap and sat serenely in the back of the hoverer. Duryodhana knew that if there was one thing that Ashwatthama thought that he excelled at, it was giving advice.

Duryodhana took his place beside Ashwatthama, and his chauffer closed the door behind them. "Your sacrifice for Sama..." Duryodhana began, trailing off deliberately as the engines of the hoverer rumbled to life beneath them.

"Did it please you, Your Highness?" Ashwatthama asked hopefully.

Duryodhana ignored the slight dip in his stomach as the hoverer lifted into the air. "Yes," he said, slowly. "Although I have to admit, watching you sing the hymns... I could have sworn that your mind was on something else entirely."

Ashwatthama started. "My apologies, Your Highness." He bowed his head in shame.

Duryodhana laughed. "Why are you apologizing? When you're worried, you're worried. It's only natural." He watched Ashwatthama turn and look out the window of the hoverer, trying to avoid Duryodhana's gaze. "Then something was on your mind," he said. "Is there anything that I can do for you?"

Ashwatthama looked down at his hands. "It would be inappropriate of me to burden Your Highness with my small problems," Ashwatthama said carefully. _Inappropriate _was a polite euphemism. A king came to a priest for spiritual advice; never the other way around.

Which meant that Ashwatthama was telling Duryodhana to drop the subject. Duryodhana frowned. Ashwatthama's shoulders were tense, and his hands were clenched in his lap. He was sitting with his back a bit too straight. Ashwatthama was clearly feeling uncomfortable, and clearly being guarded. That was no good. It was too warm inside the hoverer, too close. Duryodhana glanced out his window and frowned even more darkly. Lately, he only seemed able to concentrate when he felt cold.

Ashwatthama shivered. "Is a window open?" he asked, breathing out and watching his own breath puff in a cloud.

"I don't think so," Duryodhana said, banishing the cold feeling around them with a thought. "These old hoverers, you know, sometimes the windows warp and don't fit well into the door casings, they get drafty--"

"Pardon me, Your Highness," Ashwatthama mumbled quickly, reaching into his robes and pulling out his comm unit, which was buzzing and vibrating. "Who's calling me now?" he asked it, impatiently. He shook it, pushed a few buttons, and frowned. "Nobody's calling me now," he answered himself. But the comm unit kept vibrating and buzzing in his hand. "Silly thing must be broken--"

"Short-circuited. I've seen a lot of them do that lately," Duryodhana commented.

"It won't turn off." Ashwatthama glowered at his raucous comm unit, then sighed and turned toward Duryodhana, chagrined. "This is rather embarrassing, I'm afraid."

"It's not your fault." Duryodhana leaned back in his seat. "Those things are so outdated and unreliable. Somebody ought to start a class-action lawsuit or something--"

"Ah ha," Ashwatthama said, as his comm unit finally fell silent. He pushed a few more buttons, then frowned again. "Well, now it's completely dead." He frowned and slipped it back into his robes. He turned back toward Duryodhana. "I'm sorry, Your Highness, you were saying something...?"

"You were going to tell me what's troubling you so much today."

"Oh." Ashwatthama fell silent for a moment, and Duryodhana was afraid that he might have brought his guard up again. But then Ashwatthama drummed his fingers nervously on his legs and said, "It's silly, really."

"I wouldn't think so," Duryodhana said.

"Mmm." Ashwatthama looked down at his hands again and quietly began to speak.

* * *

IX.

Arjuna had never been to a public spaceport before.

A large hat on his head, shades covering his eyes, and a mantra on his lips, he shuffled through the long line of people waiting to have their luggage inspected. He kept glancing out the tall glass windows lining the area where he and what felt like thousands of others were corralled, gazing at the distant view of Hastinapura proper and his father's majestic palace towering on a cliff high above it all. He wouldn't be allowed to talk to his mother or his brothers or Mr. Drona or Ashwatthama for _sixteen days. _That already felt like an eternity.

Someone suddenly shoved Arjuna forward. He stumbled and struggled to hold onto the handle of his luggage. "Move it," an enormous man with a long dark beard and beady, angry eyes snapped at him. "The line's moving, you idiot!"

Arjuna bit back a retort and took a few quick steps forward. _I wish I could tell him that I was a prince and that he'd better watch his tongue or I'll--_ Arjuna sighed when he remembered that his brother Yudhisthira would never let him _actually _behead anyone.

This was going to be a long trip, Arjuna could tell.

* * *

X.

"It makes perfect sense," Ashwatthama said, his hands still resting loosely around teacup, which he had not once lifted to his lips. "I mean, I should have anticipated that this would happen. But I didn't want to, I suppose."

Duryodhana nodded, solemnly. He and Ashwatthama were alone with untouched tea and fruit and cakes between them. Duryodhana had banished his servants nearly thirty minutes ago. He had found Ashwatthama a willing speaker, once he was prodded a few times. _At least, _thought Duryodhana, _he really is as trusting and naive as he looks._

"I know why Papa wanted to have a son in the first place," Ashwatthama went on, quietly, staring at his tea as he was wont to do, rather than meeting Duryodhana's eyes. "Because that was the only way to pass on the teachings of the Ajagava order. I know he was hurt when I was forbidden from following him in the order, but--"

"Why?" Duryodhana blurted out, helpless to resist the urge to ask. "Why were you forbidden?"

Ashwatthama fell silent and clenched up instantly. His shoulders hunched and his hands tightened around his teacup.

A mistake, Duryodhana realized. This was something that Ashwatthama was not willing to speak of in front of him.

Ashwatthama suddenly winced, and his right hand flew up to the curling blue mark on his forehead. "Ah," he hissed.

Duryodhana blinked, startled. This hadn't happened before. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes." Ashwatthama slowly lowered his hand, although it seemed to be trembling slightly. He forced himself to look up and smile wanly at Duryodhana. "Just a headache. Sinuses, I'm afraid."

"Can I get you something for that...?"

"No thank you, Your Highness. It's already gone."

"Thank goodness."

Ashwatthama blinked, as if suddenly confused. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "What was I saying?"

"You couldn't join the Ajagava order," Duryodhana prompted, patiently. He was tempted to try and ask _why _again, but restrained himself. Whatever the answer to that simple question was, it was something that Ashwatthama was deeply protective of.

"He taught me what he could, regardless of the prohibition," Ashwatthama went on, his gaze focused on his cold tea again. "But he still followed the rules, I guess. He wouldn't teach me anything violent. He wouldn't teach me any of the offensive astras or mantras." Ashwatthama frowned. "I was there when Papa told Arjuna that he would teach him the secrets of the Ajagava order, even though Arjuna wasn't really his son, which meant that such a thing would have been forbidden." Ashwatthama squeezed his teacup tightly. "I thought that meant that Papa would teach Arjuna the same things that he had taught me. I didn't want to think that Papa would be willing to break even more rules for Arjuna than he did for me. I didn't think that Papa would go so far as to give Arjuna the _brahmastra_." Ashwatthama finally looked up at Duryodhana, and his eyes were full of sorrow. "If Papa was going to break the rules and teach Arjuna the _brahmastra _even though it was forbidden, why couldn't he break the rules and teach _me _the _brahmastra_?"

Duryodhana had stopped listening to Ashwatthama two sentences previously. "The _brahmastra_?!" he breathed. _"Arjuna knows the brahmastra?!_"

"Yes," Ashwatthama said, frowning. "Even though it's completely useless in that he can never use it, but--"

"The _brahmastra_?!" Duryodhana repeated, incredulous. "That mantra that can destroy entire worlds?!" He shivered, remembering the day that he had learned about that terrible spell during his history lessons with Grandpa Bhisma. The idea of that much power in the hands of a teenage brat like Arjuna...

The idea of that much power in the hands of _Yudhisthira_...

"Your Highness?" Ashwatthama asked.

Duryodhana shook his head quickly. "I'm sorry, I'm just surprised... The _brahmastra_, of all things..."

"It's just a formality," Ashwatthama said, quickly. "Something like the _brahmastra_ is only passed on so that it will never be forgotten. It's not passed down because anybody ever intends to actually use it."

"Do you trust Arjuna to understand that?" Duryodhana asked, sharply.

Ashwatthama fell quiet. Then he said, very quietly, "No."

"No?" Duryodhana asked, intrigued.

"Sometimes he seems like such a child," Ashwatthama said, his voice so low that Duryodhana had to strain to hear. "Because, honestly? I know that he's still upset about what happened at the weapons contest, even though..." Ashwatthama trailed off.

Duryodhana said nothing, waiting.

"Even though I think that the challenger won fair and square. But it would have made Papa and Arjuna mad at me if I had said so."

Bingo, Duryodhana thought.

"It's not fair!" Ashwatthama suddenly hissed, and Duryodhana was taken aback by the force of his outburst. "Papa broke the rules for _him _and taught _him _the _brahmastra _even though he's still an immature child and even though I-- I--" Ashwatthama trembled for a moment, then seemed to suddenly deflate under the weight of his own anger. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, hanging his head in shame. "I have no right to--"

"You have every right, I think," Duryodhana said. "There is nothing sinful about a son questioning his father. No father can be perfect, Ashwatthama. Not even yours."

Ashwatthama looked up at Duryodhana, sharply. "You don't know," he breathed, angrily. "You don't know what he gave up, what he sacrificed for me. I could never..."

Duryodhana nodded slowly. "I understand," he said, kindly. "And I'm sure that your father cares about you very much. You're right to remain so loyal to him. But then again," Duryodhana added, watching Ashwatthama's face carefully, "Mr. Drona has duties to his son, and then he has duties to the Ajagava. He can hardly be faulted for desiring to pass on all of the Ajagava's teachings. I suppose he can hardly be faulted for wishing that Arjuna were his real son."

Ashwatthama's mouth twitched.

"The gods and their ways are unfathomable to us, sometimes." Duryodhana took a sip of his tea. "Your father prayed for a son, and what the gods gave him was someone who could not receive the teachings of his order. I'm sure he would never resent you for that, though."

Ashwatthama sat perfectly still for a moment, save for the muscle in his throat that was working itself in a strange way. Then he stood up suddenly, nearly spilling his tea. "I have to go," he said quickly, pushing in his chair and rushing toward the door. "I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but I have to go."

"Of course you do." Duryodhana struggled to suppress the urge to grin as he watched Ashwatthama leave.

Ashwatthama was gone in an instant. That left Duryodhana alone with the tea.

Duryodhana pushed aside his tea, folded his arms on the table, and rested his head in his arms. _The brahmastra_, he thought. The idea of Arjuna having such a powerful weapon at his disposal - which meant that Yudhisthira had such a powerful weapon at his disposal - was unbearable. But what could Duryodhana do about it? Only one thing, really, and that was to make sure that he also somehow had the _brahmastra _in his corner. _Karna, _Duryodhana suddenly thought, as he impatiently tapped his fingers on the table. _He'll get it for me. Maybe his teacher knows it. Whoever his teacher is. What is taking Yuyutsu so long with...?_

Duryodhana's thoughts slipped seamlessly into a daydream of the world trembling beneath his feet.

* * *

XI.

Arjuna lied down gingerly on the bed in his cabin. The mattress was stiff and the blankets were thin. He frowned to himself. He had been standing in line after line all day, and had only been able to board his ship less than a few hours ago. Arjuna rolled over in the bed and sighed. The pillow smelled the way that his brother Yudhisthira smelled after he had just finished three smokerolls in a roll.

The ship was going to take nearly twenty-four hours to clear the Kuru system before it could make the jump to Panchala. Arjuna had that much time, at least, to think and plan.

He sat up and slid off the bed. Arjuna dug around inside the luggage that he had thrown open on the floor of his cabin, and pulled out what he had been looking for: a Panchalan dictionary and phrasebook.

"_I beg your pardon_," he practiced, pronouncing the words as carefully as he could, trying to remember the way that he had heard Mr. Drona and Ashwatthama speak. "_I'll have the special. Where is the restroom?_"

A lightning-tipped arrow appeared in his free hand, and he twirled it absent-mindedly as he practiced. "_I have no food to declare. I have no weapons._"

Arjuna suddenly wondered what the limits were in terms of what he was allowed to bring back to Kuru from Panchala. Surely Customs would limit the food and perishables he could bring back into the system, right? But processed candies might be permissible. Maybe Arjuna could get his mother to forgive him for kidnapping a king and likely starting an interplanetary war, if he could just bring her back a nice box of candies.

* * *

XII.

Ashwatthama's forehead hurt. He sank down onto the couch in front of the media console and turned it on, watching the news dispassionately.

"Ashwatthama?" His mother popped her head out of her study. "Hon, you look exhausted."

"I'm fine," he said, forcing himself to smile at her. "Where's Papa?"

"He commed, he said he would be back for dinner."

"Oh." Ashwatthama turned back toward the console, and his mother returned to whatever she was doing. Ashwatthama rubbed at the mark on his forehead absent-mindedly, wondering why his head hurt so much. He remembered having an audience with Prince Duryodhana which seemed to have lasted forever, he remembered drinking tea and discussing trivial matters...

_You felt anger, Ashwatthama. Deep anger and jealousy._

Ashwatthama winced at the memory. He had lost control of his emotions. No wonder his head was pounding. The psychic after-effects of his outbursts in front of Duryodhana would be bouncing around his head for days.

Ashwatthama did not realize that he was dozing until he felt his father's hand on his forehead. "You have a fever," his father pointed out.

Ashwatthama opened his eyes groggily. "Wha?" he asked, intelligently.

"And you're pale, and you're sweating." Ashwatthama's father wrapped his arms around Ashwatthama's shoulder and gently pulled him off the couch. "Off to bed with you, then."

"But I don't _get _sick," Ashwatthama pointed out, thickly. "I just had… An emotion. Thing. Today."

Ashwatthama's father suddenly paused. Then he frowned and said, "Maybe, but there's also a virus going around. You were with Duryodhana today, weren't you?"

"Yes…"

"Dusshasana's been bedded with a stomach virus and Duryodhana nearly collapsed during a Council meeting a few minutes ago. Whatever this thing is, you probably got it from breathing in _their_ filthy Kuru germs."

Ashwatthama managed to laugh weakly, then he swooned against his father. "But I don't get sick," he repeated, stubbornly.

"There's a first time for everything." Ashwatthama's father led him into his bedroom and sat him down on his bed, then began removing Ashwatthama's socks and shoes.

"Where's Arjuna?" Ashwatthama asked, suddenly.

"I sent him on a pilgrimage to the woods." Ashwatthama's father sighed. "That poor child has almost no control of his emotions. Perhaps a few weeks of eating dirt and wearing leaves will be good for him."

Ashwatthama laughed again. His father left for a moment, then came back with a tray of food. "Your mother says she'll personally come and spoon-feed you unless you can clean your plate by yourself."

Ashwatthama looked down at the food, then up at his father, solemnly. "Something's going to happen, isn't it, Papa?"

Ashwatthama's father started. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Ashwatthama closed his eyes. "Arjuna isn't in the forest, is he? You've gone and done something foolish again."

Ashwatthama's father touched Ashwatthama's shoulder and said, "You should know by now that everything that I do is foolish."

"I know." Ashwatthama settled down into his bed, balancing his dinner in his lap, a contented smile on his lips. "If you weren't hopeless, then you wouldn't be my Papa."

* * *

XIII.

"It must be a virus going around," the doctor said, pulling the thermometer away from Duryodhana's wrist. He turned toward Grandpa Bhisma, who was not doing a very good job of hiding his worry. "Lord Dhaumya's apprentice also came down with a similar illness this evening."

_Really?! _Duryodhana thought, alarmed. But he controlled his face and commented neutrally, "Ashwatthama and I were together all afternoon."

"Then it's likely contagious," the doctor said, pointedly. He was still facing Grandpa Bhisma. "I'd suggest that the Prince's servants take appropriate precautions, but other than as such, I see no reason to be worried. I can give him something for his fever, but honestly, he should be able to sleep this right off."

Duryodhana settled back into the pillows piled on top of his bed and said, "Finally, an excuse to sleep!"

"You know why this happened to you," Grandpa Bhisma said sternly, as the doctor packed up his things and left. "You're overworked, and you never take care of yourself--"

Duryodhana wrapped a pillow around his ears. "You wouldn't lecture an invalid, now, would you?"

Grandpa Bhisma's face softened. "I'm supposed to worry about you. You are my grandson. My fifty-third most foolish grandson. Of course I'm going to worry about you."

Duryodhana suddenly wondered where Yudhisthira ranked in Grandpa Bhisma's list of foolish grandsons. He closed his eyes and muttered, "Okay. I'll sleep more, then. Starting now."

Grandpa Bhisma pulled Duryodhana's covers up to his chin, then paused. Behind his closed eyes, Duryodhana could sense his grandfather hovering over him for a long, long moment. Finally, Duryodhana opened his eyes. "Grandpa Bhisma?" Duryodhana asked, impatiently.

Grandpa Bhisma shook his head, the curls of his white beard flying back and forth. "I was just remembering," he said, as he stood up and stepped away from Duryodhana's bed. "I remember when you were so small, and you used to insist that I would tuck you in this way every night." He turned his face away from Duryodhana. "You were different back then," he said.

"Different?" Duryodhana asked, frowning.

"You would never keep secrets from your Grandpa, for one thing." Bhisma turned and started toward the door. "Or lie to him, either."

Grandpa Bhisma switched off the lights in the room, and closed the door behind himself as he left. Duryodhana was left alone in the darkness.

* * *

XIV.

For Yudhisthira, the following days passed slowly. With Duryodhana - who was, in all honesty, half of the actual government - laid up in bed, Yudhisthira suddenly found himself with double his normal amount of responsibility dumped in his lap.

"Please," he found himself begging Nakula early one morning, "if you would just--"

"I don't do charity breakfasts," Nakula pouted, "and I don't do crazy Vishnu cult-worshippers. So double no."

Yudhisthira clenched his fists at his side. He turned toward Sahadeva. "You--"

"I'll do the meeting with the Minister of Finance," Sahadeva volunteered, unhelpfully.

"But Bhima's already--"

"Let Bhima do the breakfast," Nakula said. "He likes food. Sahadeva and I can do the Minister of Finance, and then you can go blackmail members of Parliament or whatever you were going to do over there."

"For one thing," Yudhisthira snapped, "I'm not going to blackmail anybody, I'm going to sit down for a briefing with--"

"I really don't care," Nakula said, rolling his eyes.

"For another thing," Yudhisthira continued through gritted teeth, "You don't anything about economics, so--"

"Yes I do," Sahadeva protested. Then he scratched his ear and offered no helpful proof of his statement.

"I can't be three places at once!" Yudhisthira cried out, pleading with his brothers. "Look, all I'm asking you to do is one simple thing. You know that I almost never ask you two to do anything in the first place. Please. Just this once."

"Ask Arjuna," Nakula said. "He _really _never does anything to help you out."

"Arjuna's in the forest."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot." Nakula rolled his eyes again. "He's busy eating worms and having starvation-induced hallucinations and convincing himself that he's becoming one with the gods."

"Worms…" Sahadeva sighed. Then he suddenly tapped Nakula's shoulder and said, "You know what? I'm hungry."

"But we just had breakfast."

"I know, but we could have a second breakfast." Without giving Nakula a chance to retort, Sahadeva turned to Yudhisthira and said, "We'll do the breakfast."

"Thank you," Yudhisthira gasped, clasping at Sahadeva's hands. "Thank you so much, I--"

"You're late," Nakula pointed out, tapping the watch on his wrist.

Yudhisthira hurried away, hoping that somebody had already commed to have a hoverer ready to take him to the Parliament building. He wanted a smoke, but he knew that he didn't have the time. Fortunately, somebody had called a hoverer for him already. Down in the basement of the palace, Yudhisthira climbed into the back seat of a hoverer, only to find Uncle Vidura already sitting there waiting for him.

"I figured it would be you in here with me," Uncle Vidura said, offering Yudhisthira a glass of amber liquid as a chauffeur closed the hoverer behind Yudhisthira. "You managed to send Nakula or Sahadeva to the breakfast?"

"Both of them, if you can believe that," Yudhisthira said, taking the offered glass gratefully. He took a sip, then coughed. It wasn't lickfire - it wasn't even alcoholic. Yudhisthira wiped out his mouth angrily. "This is juice!" he gasped. "It's just... juice!"

"Naturally." Uncle Vidura folded his hands in his lap, in that particular stuffy way that he often did. "You have the weight of the world on your shoulders, Yudhisthira," he said. "Your shoulders are much more suited to such a burden than your liver."

The hoverer, which had been humming forward a moment ago, suddenly slowed and stopped. They were still in the basement of the palace. The chauffer sitting in front got out and opened in the back door again.

Grandpa Bhisma slid easily into the back of the hoverer. "Do you mind if we join you?" he asked Vidura. "We also have an appointment at the Parliament."

Vidura nodded, and before Yudhisthira could ask who _we _was supposed to be, Duryodhana slowly climbed into the back of the hoverer and flopped down into his seat, exhausted. "Guess who's back among the living?" he asked, wanly.

Yudhisthira leaned forward and gave his cousin a relieved hug. "You have no idea," he gasped, "how grateful I am to see you."

"I wish I could say likewise," Duryodhana said, gently pushing Yudhisthira away, "But in all honesty, I would rather be in bed." He leaned back in his seat and groaned. "Never again," he mumbled. "Definitely never again."

"Never again, what?" Yudhisthira asked, curiously.

"Never again in the same room as a Panchalan," Duryodhana said. "They're a whole race of viral incubators." He accepted a glass of juice that Uncle Vidura poured, and raised his glass as Uncle Vidura refilled the one held in Yudhisthira's hands. "Here's a toast," he said. "To me not being dead."

Yudhisthira nodded and raised his own glass. "To peace and prosperity," he added.

"To having no major crisis to deal with."

"To peace with Panchala and Madra."

"To good health."

"To high approval ratings."

"Cheers," Duryodhana said, clinking his glass against Yudhisthira's. He took a long sip of his drink, then spit it out angrily, coughing and wiping his mouth. "This isn't lickfire!" he gasped.

Yudhisthira sighed. He wondered how Arjuna was faring, out alone in the forest. Hopefully he was having an easier time of whatever he was supposed to be doing than Yudhisthira was.

* * *

XV.

When it was morning in Hastinapura, it was night in Kampilya.

Arjuna stood on the balcony of his hotel room, staring at the imposing palace rising out of the city in front of him. Even in the middle of the night, the palace's gray brick towers and turrets were lit with blazing spotlights, and Arjuna could make out the tiny, black-suited figures of guards marching smartly around its many perimeters.

Arjuna slipped his protective gloves over his wrists and took a deep breath. He would need them, tonight, to protect his arms from the snap of his bowstring. He had spent nearly a week in Kampilya, walking the streets around the palace, watching the movements of the guards, taking note of where security cameras were mounted. It had not been an easy task. The interior of the palace wasn't open to tourists, and a strict city-wide curfew kept citizens off the streets around the palace past sunset.

Arjuna checked his equipment one last time. He had a few crumpled notes of Panchalan currency tucked into his boots, and that was all that he would risk physically carrying. He had the mantras in his head and the bow tingling beneath his palms, and that was all that he needed. His luggage and everything else, he would abandon in his hotel room. Once he started, there was no turning back.

Arjuna climbed up onto the railing of his balcony. He was on the fourth floor of the hotel, which offered a nice view of the palace, but was unfortunately far off the ground. But Arjuna couldn't risk leaving through the hotel lobby. It was hours past curfew time, and he would be noticed. So he stood, balancing on the railing of the balcony, steadying his breathing.

_Three, two, one._

Arjuna jumped.

He whispered a mantra as the wind whipped past him, and landed safely in a crouch. He sprung forward, using the momentum of his fall to push him into a sprint. He pounded across the parking lot of the hotel and into the streets. He whipped past two or three guards at a time, clouding their minds so that they wouldn't notice him. He ran straight up the street leading to the palace, sprinting nimbly over rows of spikes meant to stop auto tires and magnetic disrupters meant to hold hoverers in place. He ran right past a guard posted by the side of the road, leapt over a yellow-and-black painted gate meant to block autos yet again, and then--

He ran right into the guard crossing the road before he could stop himself.

Arjuna stumbled backward, struggling to regain his balance. The guard whom he had just smacked into wasted no time in pulling the rifle off his back and aiming it right at Arjuna's chest. He opened his mouth to shout something--

_Great. Not all of the mantras in the world are going to do any good if I run right into them! And none of the mantras in the world are going to do any good if this guy shouts or fires or raises any sort of alarm!_

Arjuna's bow was in his hand before he even realized it. The arrow he cocked was more a curse than a point. He fired, and the guard in front of him dropped his rifle with a clatter, and slowly crumpled to the ground.

Arjuna looked around quickly. They were alone on the road - nobody seemed to have heard or noticed what had just happened. But that wouldn't last long. Arjuna bent over quickly to check the guard's pulse and breathing - he was fine - then instantly leapt back into his pelting run.

Arjuna began scaling walls as soon as he ran into them. The gray bricks that made up the outer walls of the palace provided numerous and deep ledges for his fingers and toes. But Arjuna could also easily plunge his arrows right into the bricks and use them as grips for his feet and hands, as well. Arjuna scaled one wall, leapt down into a courtyard, and sprinted through a maze of flowers and sculpted bushes to the next wall. He whispered mantras that he hoped would cloud the lenses of the security cameras that he could hear whirring in the darkness of the garden.

_Please, Lord Indra, _Arjuna prayed as he scaled the next wall, _I have no idea where Drupada is inside this enormous palace. Please guide me to him._

Arjuna leapt down onto a balcony, and pushed open the unlocked glass doors in front of him. He slid past silk curtains and tiptoed past a wall lined with books and a large, ancient desk, upon which sat no computer. Whatever room Arjuna had just found himself in, he was alone.

Arjuna stood in the center of the study, closed his eyes, and controlled his breathing. He had left a guard collapsed in the road leading up the palace - which meant that he no longer had time to go searching for Drupada. Either the gods would show him in the way, or he would fail.

You've already found him, the wind blowing in through the open balcony doors whispered to Arjuna.

Arjuna nodded to himself, then walked slowly, silently, across the study. He pushed open a heavy wooden door, and found himself walking right into the king's spacious bed chambers. Arjuna crept across the room, which was almost entirely empty save for the enormous bed, draped in silks and covered in sheer canopies, in the center of the room. Arjuna peered at the top of the bed as he approached, trying to make out Drupada's figure. _What if he's with one of his wives tonight?!_ Arjuna thought, suddenly in a panic. Then he forced himself to calm down. Surely the gods would not have led him astray...

Of course not. Arjuna squinted, and could make out the shape of the old man buried beneath his blankets. A tuft of Drupada's white hair, reflecting the moonlight filtering in through the windows in the ceiling, shone like a beacon in the gloom of the bedroom.

Arjuna summoned an arrow to his hand, and silently crept up to the edge of the bed. The situation could not have been more perfect: Drupada was lying on his back, his white throat exposed above the edge of his blankets, snoring his old-man's snores. Arjuna lowered the tip of his arrow to Drupada's throat, then, with his other hand, gently shook the old king's shoulder.

Drupada's eyes flew open instantly, and he choked on his own snore. Arjuna pressed the tip of his arrow into the soft spot where Drupada's jaw met his neck and hissed, "Don't make a sound."

Drupada held still, but his eyes, bright and alert, searched Arjuna's face. "You are not the first of my would-be assassins to have made it this far," he whispered calmly.

"I'm not here to take your life."

Drupada squinted up at Arjuna's face, then, slowly, his eyes widened. "The Kuru prince," he breathed. "So Lord Bhisma finally saw fit to send one of his spawn after me?"

"What?" Arjuna almost fumbled and dropped his arrow. "Grandpa Bhisma has nothing to do with this," Arjuna said quickly, once again pressing his arrow into Drupada's throat. "Now get up. I'm taking you with me."

Drupada held still for a moment longer, then hissed impatiently, "I can't get up, you twit, your arrow will cut my throat open."

"Oh." Arjuna pulled back his arrow a short distance. "Sorry." He kept his arrow close to Drupada's jaw as Drupada slowly sat up in his bed.

"My shoes and clothes are in an adjoining room," Drupada said as he slid out of his bed. He was wearing nothing but a nightdress. His ancient feet were bare and white.

"We don't have time," Arjuna said, grasping Drupada's hand and pulling him back toward the study from where he had entered. "I'm sorry, but--"

"This is your first abduction, isn't it?" Drupada shook his head. "Amateur. I remember twelve years ago, when that silly terrorist group snatched me right out of my hoverer--"

"Be quiet!" Arjuna hissed, edging toward the open balcony on the far end of the study.

"Have you thought about how you're going to get me through the window and down to the ground?" Drupada asked, smugly.

Arjuna twitched angrily. "I--"

He never had the chance to finish, however, because that was when he realized that there was an axe blade swooping down toward his head.

Arjuna ducked and pulled Drupada down with him just in the nick of time. There was a thunderous crash as the axe buried itself in the bookshelf behind Arjuna. Arjuna's first thought was that Drupada had somehow managed to attack him, but then he realized that Drupada was down on the ground with him, and there was a woman cursing and trying to pull the axe free of the bookshelf.

Arjuna rolled into a crouch then leapt back into a standing position. He couldn't use his bow - it required two hands, and one of his hands was still grasping Drupada's wrist - but he still had astras, and he--

"Don't you dare!" the woman shrieked, and swung her axe at Arjuna's head again. Arjuna ducked, and Drupada snapped angrily, "Are you trying to kill me, too?"

The axe was back, this time swinging toward Arjuna's ribs. There was no way for Arjuna to avoid it. He flung out his free hand and prayed and felt Gandiva crackle to life with a flash of lightning. The body of the wooden bow should not have been enough to block the swinging blade of the axe; but Gandiva was no ordinary bow. The axe blade smashed into Gandiva and then seemed to _bounce_, flying backward as arcs of lightning raced up its gleaming metal body. The woman started screaming, and Arjuna turned away from her, setting his sights on the door behind her. Without bothering to see what became of his attacker, Arjuna tightened his grip around Drupada's wrist and pulled him out of the study, through another door, and into a high-ceilinged hallway. Arjuna began running as fast as he could, and Drupada kept up easily.

"Halt!" the woman shouted from somewhere behind them. Arjuna had no intention of halting, so he ignored her. He ignored her successfully until the first arrow screamed past his ear. He stumbled and ducked instinctively, and three arrows suddenly arced over his head and stuck into the ground in front of him, quivering. Arjuna stopped and whirled on his heels, as Drupada stepped behind him.

She was standing behind them in the hallway, her nightdress torn and scorched, her hair wild and uncombed and smoking. But there was not a single burn mark on her flesh. The ancient bow in her hands creaked and groaned as she held it taught, a razor-tipped arrow cocked and ready, aimed at Arjuna's heart. "Release my father now," she shouted at him, "and I might spare your life."

Arjuna turned toward Drupada. "I was told that your children were away on Madra," he said.

"My sons are on Madra," Drupada corrected Arjuna, calmly. "This is my daughter, Draupadi. Surely you remember her?"

Arjuna turned back to face the woman who had attacked him. It _was _the same princess that he remembered from the weapons arena. He simply hadn't recognized her without her makeup and hair ornaments.

For a moment, their eyes met. Her grip on her bow faltered, and her eyes widened. "The Kuru prince...?" she whispered slowly.

Arjuna saw his opening, and took it. He risked letting go of Drupada's hand for a single moment, but a single moment was all that it took to summon Gandiva and snap its string. Draupadi blinked, wasting precious seconds as she slowly realized that the string of her bow been cleanly severed into three separate sections. Arjuna pulled Drupada with him as he leapt down the remaining length of the hallway and around a corner.

"Where can I access a hoverer?" Arjuna shouted at Drupada as they ran.

"Wouldn't it make it too easy for you if I told you?" Drupada responded coldly, his breath heavy with the effort of keeping up with Arjuna's running.

"Either we get a hoverer now," Arjuna snapped, "or we run this way all the way to the spaceport."

Drupada pounded along in silence behind Arjuna for a moment, then said, "To your left and three levels down."

Arjuna ground to a sudden halt, and again risked letting go of Drupada's wrist for a split second. He could already hear alarm sirens sounding throughout the palace. He bow flashed in and out of his hands - just long enough for him to fire a volley of explosive lightning-tipped arrows directly into the wall to his side - and the wall suddenly exploded away from them. Arjuna gripped Drupada's wrist again and pulled him through the hole he had made in the wall. "Come on," he said. "We'll take a shortcut."

* * *

XVI.

"Everything's grounded," the voice crackled over the comm and into Gurnam's ear again. "Executive order from His Majesty's office."

"But we have to lift off tonight," Gurnam explained patiently to the traffic controller, as patiently as he still could. "We're already fifteen hours behind schedule, and we--"

"Gurnam!" his co-pilot, Hemachandra, suddenly shouted down from somewhere within the rows of boxes filling the back of the transport. "Gurnam, you have to turn on the console, you gotta listen to this!"

"I'm trying to get us liftoff clearance," Gurnam snapped impatiently at Hemachandra. He turned back to his comm and went on as politely as he could, "Listen, surely you could make an exception for--"

"If you liftoff now," the voice on the other end of the comm calmly interrupted, "You'll be shot down instantly."

Gurnam swallowed nervously. "I don't suppose I should ask the reason for the flight blackout, should I?"

"Haven't you seen a console lately?" the traffic controller responded, incredulous. "The King's been abducted. By a terrorist from Kuru."

_Huh, _thought Gurnam. Was there going to be a war? Would he and Hemachandra have even their little candy-transport drafted into the fleet?

"They're going to declare war with Kuru," Hemachandra announced cheerfully, climbing back into the cockpit. "I don't know why they haven't already." He smacked his fist into his right hand. "That'll be something, won't it? I wonder how well those fishmongers can pilot."

Gurnam shook his head. "I don't think--"

He never had a chance to finish, however, because that was when he suddenly felt the arrow pressed against his throat.

"Don't move," someone behind his back breathed into his ear. Gurnam felt a gloved hand resting casually on his shoulder, its fingers tense. Gurnam strained his eyes, and saw Hemachandra sitting beside him, his eyes wide and his mouth working silently.

Gurnam swallowed again, and felt the sides of the arrow's tip working against his throat.

"Prep the engines for liftoff," whoever was behind Gurnam told Hemachandra.

Hemachandra froze for a moment, staring Gurnam's attacker up and down. Finally he asked, in a small, strangled voice, "How did you get in?"

"Through the on-ramp," the hijacker explained, impatiently. "You just didn't notice us."

_Us? _Gurnam thought. He was still afraid to turn his head to see his attacker. "If we liftoff now," Gurnam tried to explain, although the arrow pressed to his throat made speaking a distinctly unpleasant experience, "we'll be shot down."

"Not if you broadcast a message that we have the king onboard," the hijacker said.

Hemachandra turned his head and looked behind him. "Oh," he said. "We do."

"What are you transporting?" Gurnam heard King Drupada's curious voice grumbling behind him. "Sweets?"

"Chocolates," Gurnam clarified, thinking that the moment could not have been more surreal.

"Excellent," the king declared. "Then we shall not have to go hungry. Provided, of course, this small ship can outrun the tractor beams of my daughter's fleet."

_He doesn't sound very upset about being kidnapped, _Gurnam thought. "I'll cooperate," he told his hijacker, "if you would please just--"

"Of course." The arrow was pulled away from Gurnam's throat, and the hand left his shoulder. Gurnam turned his head and saw the king sitting behind him, barefoot and in his nightdress, his uncombed white hair flying wildly around his head. He had already pried open a crate - what, with his bare hands? - and was busy fishing out a box of chocolates. Standing beside him was a young man dressed all in black, wearing leather archery gloves. There was no trace of the arrow that he had just been holding to Gurnam's throat. "Start broadcasting," the hijacker told Hemachandra, impatiently. "Tell them that we're lifting off. Tell them that if they shoot us down, the king is dead."

"Right." Hemachandra turned toward the comm unit and pressed down on a button. "This is the commercial freighter _Martaha_. We're lifting off now. His Majesty and one Kuru hijacker are onboard. Do not shoot us down. Repeat, do not shoot us down. His Majesty is onboard."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the comm. Gurnam took a deep breath and switched on the liftoff engines.

Finally, from the other end of the comm came a crackling voice. "Verify that His Majesty is onboard," came a new voice. It was not someone whom Gurnam remembered speaking to before.

"I'm right here," Drupada snapped into the comm, leaning between Gurnam and Hemachandra and stuffing a chocolate-covered berry into his mouth. "Tell these idiots approaching us on the floor not to shoot at us. And open the cursed hangar roof while you're at it."

Gurnam watched the armored vehicles rolling toward the _Martaha_ from across the hangar floor. They came to a slow halt. As the _Martaha's _engines cycled up to full power, the hangar roof above them gradually opened, metal plates sliding away from each other with excruciating slowness.

"We're not the only thing lifting off," Hemachandra said, pointing to a radar screen. "Something big's lifting off three sahasra-clicks away. That's where the fleet's base is."

"They're going to chase us and tractor-beam us," the hijacker murmured to himself. He turned to Gurnam. "Liftoff," he said, "But don't strain the engines yet. Go slow. Let them catch up to us before we clear the atmosphere." He looked up, scouring the roof of the ship with his eyes. "You have an emergency hatch, don't you?"

"In the back," Gurnam said. He turned his head, and saw that King Drupada had already settled happily into a makeshift throne on top of several crates of chocolates, an open box in his hand. He bit into one chocolate, frowned, and placed the half-eaten candy back in the box.

The _Martaha _lifted off, slowly. Gurnam felt a drop of sweat rolling down his back. Spotlights from within and without the hangar followed him, tracking the _Martaha _into the sky.

"Trajectory?" Hemachandra asked, as the hijacker returned from his inspection of the back of the ship. "What's our trajectory?!"

The hijacker was silent for a moment, then said, "How long will it take us to clear the system?"

"Twenty hours."

"Too long." The hijacker frowned. "Is there a safe spot within the system to make a jump?"

Gurnam and Hemachandra exchanged glances. Gurnam turned toward the hijacker and slowly said, "For a ship this small, it should be theoretically possible to find a safe space between the gas planets out here..." He pointed to a spot on the map now being projected onto the glass shield in front of him. "But it would take even longer than twenty hours for our shipboard computer to calculate a spot. There's too much gravitational interference."

The hijacker fell quiet again, then closed his eyes and stood still. He slowly lifted his hand, then gently rested one extended finger on a spot on the map, between Panchala Eight and Panchala Nine. He opened his eyes and said, "Here."

Gurnam swallowed, tasting the dryness of his own mouth. "There, what?"

"We'll make the jump there. It's safe."

"How do you know that?!" Hemachandra asked, incredulously.

"The storm told me so," the hijacker said.

Gurnam looked out the glass shield at the sky falling away around them. The weather seemed perfectly clear to him.

Hemachandra leaned over toward the comm and activated it again. "This is the commercial freighter _Martaha_, repeat, this is the commercial freighter _Martaha. _I'm broadcasting our trajectory now. Please do not block or interfere."

The hijacker suddenly leaned over Hemachandra's shoulder and touched the back of his neck lightly. "As much as I don't want to," he said, "if you try anything funny, I will hurt you."

"He very much can, too," the king added helpfully from behind them, his mouth full of chocolates.

Hemachandra shivered and nodded.

Gurnam steered the _Martaha_ carefully. They were now well over a sahasra-click above Panchala's surface, entering the stratosphere. "We've got company," he said, tapping the radar screen to bring it to the hijacker's attention.

The hijacker sucked in his breath. "It's huge," he said, watching the enormous blip of the Panchalan ship approaching them on the radar screen.

"And there's more behind it," Hemachandra commented, the radar screen casting strangely-lit shadows over his face.

"How long do we have before we're in tractor beam range?" the hijacker suddenly demanded.

"Less than sixty seconds."

The hijacker turned and pelted toward the back of the ship. "Hold onto something!" he shouted. "I'm going to open the hatch!"

Gurnam turned around quickly in his seat. "Your Majesty, there's an emergency harness--"

"Already found it," Drupada rumbled. He looked somewhat ridiculous, in his nightdress and bare feet, strapped to the wall in a brightly-painted emergency harness.

Hemachandra fumbled to strap himself into his seat. "Forty-five seconds," he said.

"Plenty of time," the hijacker commented loudly. With that, he opened the hatch in the roof of the back of the ship.

The suction was instant and intense. Gurnam turned his head - the wind seemed about to rip it right off his neck - and saw the hijacker pulling himself up on top of the roof of the ship. _What in the five hells is he holding onto?! _Gurnam wondered, as he watched his crates of chocolates flying about the ship in disarray, crashing and smashing into each other. Drupada calmly swatted away a loose bit of crate and several boxes of chocolate that flew toward his head.

And instant later, it was over. The hijacker lowered himself back down into the ship and pulled down the hatch door, wheeling it closed. He accomplished all of this with one hand. In the other hand he held an enormous bow woven of flickering lightning and splashing rain. "We're clear," he said, and the bow vanished from his hand, as if it had never even been.

Gurnam steered the _Martaha _into a tight turn. Through the transparent cockpit shield in front of him he caught a clear glimpse of the distant yet enormous military ship, and the brilliant orange explosion erupting from its right and left wings, where the tractor beams would have been mounted.

Gurnam touched Hemachandra's shoulder, and Hemachandra silently transferred the piloting over to his console. Gurnam unstrapped himself and climbed out of his seat. He approached Drupada, bowed low, and began helping the old man undo his own harness straps. "Thank you," Drupada said. He seemed even more ridiculous than before, now that a few seconds of exposure to atmospheric suction had messed his wild white hair even worse than previously.

Gurnam pulled away from Drupada, stood up, looked around his ship, and groaned. Crates of chocolates were lying in disarray everywhere, most smashed open, and boxes of chocolates were spilled all over the floor. The hijacker, standing in the middle of this mess, lifted up his foot, frowned, and scraped a smashed candy off the sole of his boot with an arrow that suddenly appeared in his hand, then vanished just as quickly. "Um," he said, suddenly looking sheepish, "Um, I'm sorry. I'll help clean this up."

Gurnam had no idea what to say to this.

"We're clearing the atmosphere!" Hemachandra shouted from the cockpit, "and the fleet is falling back! There's nothing between us and the jump coordinates."

"And nothing that can catch up with us, either." The hijacker turned toward the king. "Right?"

The king nodded slowly, grinning. "You've done your homework," he said, impressed. "My apologies for calling you an amateur." Then he pulled himself up on top of one of the few intact crates left in the ship, settled on top of it as if it were a throne, and commanded regally, "You, pilot. Clean up this mess. You, prince. Come here and massage my feet. It is entirely your fault that they ache so."

The hijacker sighed and knelt in front of the king, removing his gloves. Gurnam watched them for a moment, then set to work straightening up the remains of his chocolate shipment. _Prince? _he thought. _Maybe I don't want to know._

* * *

XVII.

It was mid-afternoon when Sanjaya interrupted Dhritarashtra's otherwise quite pleasant nap on the veranda of his chambers.

"Your Majesty!" Sanjaya shouted, shaking Dhritarashtra's shoulder. "_Your Majesty!_"

Dhritarashtra's first bleary thought was that it had better be a real emergency, if Sanjaya was going to be so forward as to touch him. He second thought was that Sanjaya smelled like a panicked animal. "Sanjaya?" he more yawned than asked.

"Your Majesty, Panchala has declared war--!"

Dhritarashtra sat up instantly, wide awake. "No," he said, as if by sheer force of the word he could negate it.

"Yes!" Sanjaya cried out, pulling Dhritarashtra from his cushioned couch. "Drupada's daughter is on the comm waiting for you, she's demanding Prince Arjuna's head--"

"Drupada's daughter?" Dhritarashtra asked, as Sanjaya led him. "Where is Drupada himself?"

"That's, er... That's the issue, really."

* * *

XVIII.

The eerie silence and still blankness of jumpspace flowed outside the _Martaha. _Gurnam counted away the seconds and minutes until their arrival outside the rimcloud of Kuru.

"So..." Gurnam tried to approach the hijacker, whom he knew now was a Kuru prince, which only made things worse, "What are we going to do when we arrive at the rimcloud?"

"Hmm?" Prince Arjuna looked up from the box of chocolates that he had been busy devouring. Unlike Drupada, he had not yet placed a single rejected sweet back into his box. "Make a straight approach to Hastinapura. It should only take twenty-four hours." He was sitting at the feet of Drupada, who had enthroned himself on top of a crate of chocolates and was now busily ignoring everyone in the ship. Several hours ago the king had changed out of his nightdress and into the spare change of clothes that Hemachandra had brought along for their two-days' journey between Panchala and Kuru. Now the king was wearing a pilot's jacket, utility pants, and Hemachandra's oversized spare boots. He had at least been able to comb his beard in the tiny restroom unit attached to the back of the ship, but that had done little for his appearance.

"They'll know that we're coming. Panchala will have informed them by now." Gurnam turned toward the view-shields of the cockpit, watching the whiteness of jumpspace flow by. "When we jump out, we could find Panchala and Kuru at war."

"Hmm." The prince chewed his chocolates thoughtfully. "That, and my mother is going to _kill _me."

"So then why did you do it?" Hemachandra asked, from his seat in the cockpit.

"Because..." The prince tapped his chin, straining to find the right words. "Because I had to. Because this is my _dakshina._"

Gurnam and Hemachandra simultaneously raised their eyebrows.

"That is not your reason," Drupada rumbled, tossing aside another box of chocolates. "You did this not because of your _dakshina, _but out of foolish, stupid, blind love for that man."

"It's not foolish or blind!" Arjuna defended himself, standing up angrily. "I would never give my loyalty blindly!"

"Enjoy him for now," Drupada said, seated imperiously on his crate of chocolates and licking his fingers. "That man will abandon you sooner rather than later."

"Mr. Drona would never--!" Arjuna cut himself off, and clenched his fists. "Don't you understand?!" he shouted, angrily. "He never abandoned you, you're the one who abandoned him! He's been trying to speak to you all this time and you would never once let yourself listen to him!"

Gurnam discretely backed away from both of them, sensing that he was about to listen to a conversation that he had no business listening to.

But Hemachandra interrupted them both again. "We're getting another hailing from--"

"Don't answer it!" Arjuna snapped, impatiently. "I said I want comm silence until we finish the jump!"

"Idiocy," Drupada declared, as he stood up suddenly. "If you don't let me talk my daughter out of annihilating your entire civilization, you will find Kuru's cities razed to the ground by the time we approach its atmosphere. The fleet will arrive at the rim cloud while we're still in transit passing the gas planets, and my daughter's ships have long-range attack capabilities. Very long range. And Panchala will unleash hell upon your world, unless you let me make a simple comm. call. "

Arjuna eyed the old king suspiciously. "You're volunteering to call off the war?"

Drupada nodded, slowly.

Arjuna stared at him for another long moment, then looked away and hissed, "Very well. You can open up a channel to her."

Drupada turned away from Arjuna, toward the cockpit. Hemachandra stepped aside to allow the old king access to the comm equipment. But instead of switching on the comm, Drupada paused, and glanced back toward Arjuna. "Be careful, Prince," he said. "Be wary of giving your heart to that man. His loyalties are not what you think."

Arjuna glared at a crate of chocolates and said nothing.

Drupada finally leaned over the comm equipment and switched it on. He then turned to Hemachandra and asked, with unusual humility, "Young man, it does appear that technology has advanced a bit since the last time that I had to touch one of these cursed things. You wouldn't mind helping out an old man for just a moment, would you?"

* * *

XVIV.

Hastinapura was silent, a city collectively holding its breath. The convoy of hoverers escorting the Panchalan king and the Kuru prince from the port to the palace passed through streets lined with Panchalan and Kuru soldiers, standing at uneasy attention side-by-side. On the outskirts of the city, the hulking shapes of the Panchalan warships that had laid siege to the spaceport dominated the horizon.

A dark-colored, thinly-armored hoverer pulled into the basement levels of the palace. Several moments later, Arjuna was leading Drupada by the arm up through the bowels of the complex. Drupada walked along with an air of grudging defeat, still dressed in the boots and jacket that he had borrowed from Hemachandra. The two of them were followed by an entourage of tense, silent guards. The guards wore mismatched uniforms. Some were from Panchala, others from Kuru.

They made it to the Great Hall, fortunately, before Arjuna could completely lose his nerve.

"_Father!_"

Draupadi was running toward them even before Arjuna and Drupada had finished stepping through the massive doors which marked their official entrance into the hall. Arjuna hesitated for a moment when he saw Draupadi, almost failing to recognize her. This was neither the Draupadi dressed in silks and jewels that he remembered from the weapons tournament, nor the wild-eyed, ungroomed Draupadi who had attempted to murder him with an axe in the middle of the night. This was a Draupadi dressed for war. Her boots stomped against the floor of the hall as she ran toward them. Her long, dark, blue-black hair was bound in a tight braid circling in layers around her head. She was wearing the distinctive blue-and-black-piped uniform of the Panchalan military, gold braids bouncing from her shoulderpads.

Arjuna swallowed, and took in the rest of the hall with one quick glance. Dhritarashtra was sitting on his throne at the head of the hall, his thin gray hair standing in stark contrast to his dark, formal robes. His empty eyes and expressionless face betrayed nothing. Vidura stood at nervous attention at the king's shoulder. Bhisma stood behind them both, his hand on Vidura's shoulder, glaring down at Arjuna. Bhisma's white beard and dark eyes trembled with anger. Along one side of the hall were arranged Duryodhana and Yudhisthira and Duryodhana's brothers and Arjuna's brothers and the two queens; Duryodhana was watching Arjuna carefully, and Yudhisthira was staring at him in a peculiar, mildly aghast way. Arjuna looked away before he could see the faces of Bhima or the twins, or his mother. Instead, he looked to the other side of the hall, were Panchalan royalty and military were arranged in an identical formation. Drupada's two sons were still conspicuously absent. They would not have had time to make it from Madra to Kuru before Drupada himself arrived.

Draupadi ground to a halt less than a nose-length away from Arjuna. "Stop touching my father," she hissed.

Arjuna swallowed, but tightened his grip around Drupada's arm.

"Are you deaf?! I said--"

"_Draupadi_," Drupada suddenly admonished, sternly. "Do not be so rude. We are guests here."

Draupadi scowled. Neither she nor her father were guests. He was a captive and she was the head of an invading army, for all intents and purposes. But nevertheless, she backed a step away from her father, respectfully.

Arjuna slowly let go of Drupada's arm. The old man stepped around his daughter and strode purposefully toward the throne upon which Dhritarashtra sat. "I was informed that there is someone here waiting for me to see him. Well?"

"Out of respect for you," Dhritarashtra said slowly, "after finding out that he ordered this, we still haven't executed your esteemed host."

"_Yet,_" Bhisma added under his breath. Although everyone in the hall heard it.

Dhritarashtra clapped his hands, and Sanjaya immediately stepped forward to escort Drupada out of the hall. Arjuna watched the two of them walk back down the hall and exit through the door from which they had come. Arjuna watched the door close behind the king, and then took two deep breaths. It wasn't over yet. The moment that he let himself think it was over, he would start having to think about how much trouble Mr. Drona was in, and then his legs would surely start shaking.

"You're lucky," Draupadi suddenly said.

Arjuna turned his head toward her. He had even forgotten that she was still standing only a few steps away from him. Her dark eyes were smoldering with fury. "If my father had given me the word--" She paused, then her face grew even darker. "If my brother Dhristadumnya had been here, even Father would not have been able to hold him back."

"But he's not here," Arjuna said, pointing out the obvious. He wasn't sure what else to say. He was suddenly afraid that his legs were going to start shaking anyway. Something about the look in Draupadi's eyes threatened to turn his knees to jelly.

"You're a complete idiot," Draupadi spat. She turned away from Arjuna, her braided dark hair flying across her back, her boots stomping angrily, as she clomped back toward her army waiting on one side of the hall.

Left alone in the center of the hall again, Arjuna turned toward the blind king, and dropped into a respectful bow. "Please," he said, "there are two men in custody at the port, they kept His Majesty Drupada and I safe during our jump, I wish to honor them..."

Dhritarashtra sighed a long, slow, impatient sigh.

* * *

XX.

Ashwatthama was sitting alone in the hallway when Drupada and his escort arrived. When he saw the old king coming, Ashwatthama pressed his clenched fists against his thighs, stared down into his own lap, and said nothing.

Unfortunately, Drupada did not merely pass him by. The old man stopped right in front of Ashwatthama. "What," he asked, "Are you doing out here?"

"We're under house arrest," Ashwatthama said, raising his eyes to meet the king's. It was a great sign of disrespect, but Ashwatthama didn't care. "They won't let me go outside to pray. So I pray in the hallway."

"Surely you can pray inside your home."

"I wanted to leave before you came. I have no desire to be beneath the same roof as you."

"My," Drupada breathed, half aghast, half amused.

"My father may have forgiven you," Ashwatthama said slowly, still not looking away from the king's eyes. "But I never will. You _broke _him. You broke me. You broke apart my mother and her brother. You even broke your own son's soul for the sake of revenge."

"Maybe so," Drupada said, leaning over Ashwatthama, stroking his white beard thoughtfully. "But none of this would have ever happened if not for you." His eyes were cold, and clear. "So many lives ruined, merely because you had the audacity to exist." He straightened up, and turned away from Ashwatthama. "Do you hate me for saying so?"

"I'm sworn never to hate."

"And yet you cannot forgive?"

Ashwatthama grit his teeth.

"Then you will never be half the man that your father is," Drupada said.

Ashwatthama closed his eyes and waited until the old man, Sanjaya, and the guards had gone inside his home. He tried to focus his thoughts on Lord Shiva, but all that he could think about were the gleaming sharp points of the Lord's trident, and how he longed to shove them into the old man's throat. The scar on Ashwatthama's forehead throbbed in an almost soothing way as he relaxed his body, and lost himself in such pleasant thoughts.

* * *

XXI.

"_I cannot believe you!_" Bhisma hissed as he pulled Arjuna into his study. Arjuna scrambled with his fingers to dislodge his grandfather's grip from his arm, but it was no use. Somebody closed the door behind the two of them, and then they were left alone.

_No! _Arjuna thought. _My mother or Bhima or Uncle Dhritarashtra or ANYBODY but Grandpa Bhisma--!_

"_Sit DOWN,_" Bhisma ordered, while at the same time rather redundantly throwing Arjuna down into a chair. "I don't even know where to start with you! We've been invaded by Panchalans--"

"His Majesty Drupada would never let them hurt us--"

"_SHUT UP._"

Arjuna shut his mouth. He had never seen or heard his grandfather like this before.

"You will _be silent _while your elders are speaking!" Bhisma still would not sit down. He paced back and forth in front of Arjuna. Arjuna could feel his grandfather's fury like a tangible thing, a web being woven more tightly in the air around him with every impatient stomp of his grandfather's feet. Finally, Bhisma paused, then threw out his arms in a gesture of helpless anger. "Why, Arjuna?! HOW?! How could you possibly--?!"

"This was my dakshina."

"You are a _Kuru_, not a Panchalan! We do not practice dakshina!"

"But it would have been wrong not to do it."

"And you think that kidnapping a king, hijacking a ship, and sparking an interplanetary war _wasn't wrong_?!" Bhisma looked nearly ready to begin tearing out chunks of his own white hair. "You have a duty to your brothers and to your mother before you have a duty to some crazed fugitive from a foreign planet! Do you have any idea what position you've put this family in? Do you have any idea what your mother went through when we heard what you had done?! Or Yudhisthira?!"

"I have a pretty good idea," Arjuna answered, slowly.

This was apparently not the answer that Grandpa Bhisma had been looking for. "You could at least do your grandfather the favor of _pretending _to be remorseful." He paused and took a deep breath. "I don't know, Arjuna. I don't know what to do with you anymore. I could have your teacher executed for this--"

_"No!" _Arjuna cried out, nearly jumping out of his seat.

"Conspiracy to commit a Class A offense is an executable crime--"

"But we will do no such thing," Yudhisthira said.

Both Bhisma and Arjuna turned at once. Yudhisthira closed the study door behind him, and then stood solemnly beside Arjuna. "The state has not executed a single criminal during my father's reign nor during my uncle's reign. I will not have them start now."

"You're not supposed to be in here," Bhisma snapped.

"I'm sorry," Yudhisthira apologized, placing one hand on Arjuna's shoulder, "but this is my brother. He is, as you are so fond of pointing out, my responsibility. Isn't he?"

Bhisma scowled at Yudhisthira. "Say your piece, then."

Yudhisthira looked down at Arjuna, his face carefully blank. "Can you look me in the eye," he asked Arjuna solemnly, "and tell me why you did this terrible thing?"

"Because," Arjuna said, already a bit tired of having to explain this to everyone over and over again, "Mr. Drona asked me to. Because it was the right thing to do."

"Because it was your dakshina?"

"No," Arjuna said, shaking his head. "Grandpa Bhisma is right. I could have refused the dakshina if I wanted to. If Mr. Drona had asked me to do something that was wrong, I wouldn't have done it. But this was the right thing to do."

Yudhisthira nodded, slowly. Then he turned toward Grandpa Bhisma. "Then I do not think that he should be punished."

Bhisma glared down his nose at Yudhisthira. "Why not?"

"Because he did the right thing to do, even knowing what he was risking in doing so."

"He _believes _he did the right thing," Bhisma countered. "An individual's convictions of right and wrong can be asinine. You of all people should understand that."

"Granted." Yudhisthira nodded respectfully. "But I have my own judgment in this matter, too. And I agree with my brother."

Bhisma was now looking at Yudhisthira very carefully, but saying nothing.

"Another thing which you taught me," Yudhisthira said, pulling his hand away from Arjuna's shoulder, pressing his hands together, and bowing respectfully to Bhisma, "is that for a king, there is no higher virtue than forgiveness."

"Blind forgiveness is foolishness."

"But my judgment is not blind." Arjuna had never seen his brother speak in such a way before - soft and respectful, but absolutely rock-hard and unmoving in his opinion. "I know that my brother is young, but he is also strong and wise. I trust that he would not have committed such actions lightly."

Another long, thoughtful silence from Grandpa Bhisma. Finally, Bhisma said quietly, "The last I can recall, you were often quite vocal in your criticism of that Panchalan priest's influence on Arjuna."

"But a person's opinion can change," Yudhisthira pointed out. "That was before I realized how much that man has helped Arjuna grow up." He turned and took a step toward the door. "Come with me, Arjuna. We're done here."

Arjuna stood up out of his seat, tentatively. "Does this mean that I'm not being punished?"

"Ah... Not entirely." Yudhisthira paused in front of the study door, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "I don't know what kind of guilt trip Grandpa Bhisma was giving you, but I can guarantee you that Mother has a worse one waiting for you."

Arjuna groaned, but slunk guiltily away from his Grandfather's cold, penetrating gaze.

"Come on," Yudhisthira said softly, placing a hand on Arjuna's shoulder and steering him away from Grandpa Bhisma.

* * *

To be continued.


	13. Interlude: Bhisma

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: BHISMA

* * *

Bhisma watched Arjuna and Yudhisthira leave, closing the door behind them. Then he finally sat down at his desk, sighing as his old, old bones settled into the chair. He clicked on his desktop comm unit and leaned over its speaker, waiting to hear Vidura's voice on the other end.

"Yes?" Vidura asked.

"I want a report," Bhisma said, stating the obvious. Otherwise he wouldn't have bothered calling.

"Mrs. Kripi keeps looking right at the cameras we have installed in the home," Vidura said. "They must know that they're there."

"I'm not surprised." Drona always seemed three steps ahead of them, somehow.

"But other than that, they're just sitting around and talking. Sanjaya is here with me now. The other guards are posted outside the home... The audio fritzed out on us nearly thirty minutes ago, though."

_Again, not surprised._

"But we still have visual," Vidura said.

_Because Drona wants us to know that Drupada isn't being harmed. _

"They're just talking, though. It looks fairly civil. Oh, wait..." Vidura fell silent.

"Yes?" Bhisma asked, a bit impatiently.

"I think that Drupada might be crying."

Bhisma didn't know what to say. Finally he rested his chin on his folded hands and said, "Vidura."

"Yes?"

"I realize that this may not be the best time, but I need you to send a word to your brother for me."

"...Yes?"

"Tell him that my decision is final, and that I will not tolerate him delaying the inevitable any longer."

Bhisma could hear Vidura swallowing nervously on the other end of the comm. "Is this about...?" The problem seemed so momentous that Vidura would not even bring himself to say it.

"Absolutely. I've chosen Yudhisthira."

"But why?!" Vidura suddenly blurted out.

"Because," Bhisma said, a small smile playing on his lips for the first time in days, "today, he finally had the courage to stand up to me."

Bhisma turned off the comm unit and massaged his knuckles, cracking them gently. He supposed he should turn in for the night. Let the drama between the Panchalan king and his priest play out as it would. Bhisma would have to confront Dhritarashtra in the morning.

* * *

II.

"You can't do this to him," Dhritarashtra said. He was breathing slowly and deeply, his hands clenched. "You know how much this means to him. And I'm not sure if Yudhisthira even _wants_--"

"This isn't about which one _wants _the throne more," Bhisma said.

"You can't expect me to announce this _now_. The Panchalans are still here!"

"Oh, absolutely." Bhisma wrapped a white curl from his beard thoughtfully around his finger. "We ought to wait until Drupada's sons arrive from Madra. That will be tonight. So, then," he finished cheerfully, "you can make the announcement tomorrow. It will be quite the auspicious occasion, with Panchalan royalty visiting us."

" 'Visiting' is an… interesting… way of putting it."

"I think this invasion has been officially downgraded to a visit," Bhisma said, glancing over the king's shoulder and out over the palace gardens spread below them. Down there, the Panchalan king and his bodyguards were mingling with Duryodhana and his cabinet members and the heads of Parliament, being served fine wine and networking as best they could without being distracted by the fine weather. "Duryodhana's handling Drupada well."

"_Yes_," Dhritarashtra agreed, pointedly. "And Yudhisthira isn't even here."

"I sent Yudhisthira and Bhima to the port. The Panchalan fleet is powering down their weapons systems today. They want to make a ceremony out of it."

"And Arjuna?"

"Will not be leaving the walls of this palace again, until he turns fifty." Bhisma turned away from the king, leaving him alone on his balcony overlooking the gardens. "Have fun entertaining Drupada." He started to leave the balcony, but at the last minute, out of some half-obeyed instinct, turned his head. Duryodhana, standing several stories below the balcony, was looking right up at Bhisma, his dark eyes full of hurt.

* * *

III.

Alone in his private quarters, Bhisma sat down in front of his media console and switched it on, idly flipping through channels, wondering what the pundits were saying about Arjuna. Sanjaya could have researched and reported it for Bhisma if he had asked, but...

Bhisma's elbow bumped against something.

He started, and nearly dropped the console remote. As a muted talking head moved her mouth in a silent commentary on the screen in front of him, Bhisma turned around, wondering what he had almost knocked over. It was a rather lumpy and deformed attempt at a drinking mug, covered in garish blue glaze. Duryodhana had made it for him when he was six years old. Bhisma was using it to store his console and stereo remotes.

Bhisma sighed. _Even the gods feel fit to communicate with me in clichés, _he thought wearily. He picked up the mug and turned it around carefully in his trembling, veined hands. Suddenly he realized why he had been so intent on watching his console. Because if he had let himself look around his quarters at all, he would have been unable to avoid the fingerpainted, watercolored, and occasionally dried-rice-covered works of art that adorned all of his walls. All were made by Duryodhana and his brothers.

The earliest thing that Bhisma had from Yudhisthira was a fourteen-page paper about Abhasa's theories of the welfare state. Bhisma still had a copy of the same paper from Duryodhana, too - one that Bhisma had made Duryodhana rewrite no less than five times until it had been acceptable. And Duryodhana had done it each time he had been asked, too - staying up all night for several nights, if what Sama and Durmukha had told Bhisma had been correct, reading and researching until his eyes were red.

Bhisma put down the mug and stood up, walking over toward one of his many bookshelves. He pulled a worn, heavy book off the shelf and opened its inside cover, gazing at what he knew would be waiting for him inside. It was a photograph of his longest-surviving brother - the last photograph of his brother before his death - smiling and posing with his three sons, his arm wrapped around Dhritarashtra's shoulders. As usual, Dhritarashtra was smiling, but his useless eyes seemed to miss the gaze of the camera. Pandu's long bangs were blowing over his eyes, as he had, at the time, quite badly needed his hair to be trimmed. Vidura was smiling in a tight-lipped, closed way. Bhisma remembered that Vidura had lost his front tooth at that time, and had been too embarrassed to smile and show the gap in his teeth.

It was an old-fashioned photograph, the type printed on paper, not the type projected in a hologram. Bhisma kept it hidden in this book, slightly ashamed to admit that he kept such an old thing around, slightly ashamed admit that he still needed a photograph that he would be able to touch with his hands.

Bhisma gently rested the tip of his finger on his brother's face. He traced a line down to Dhritarashtra's misplaced, smiling gaze. "You won't let it happen, will you?" Bhisma asked the photograph. "You'd break even a promise to your own brother, for his sake."

Bhisma's fingertip lifted off Dhritarashtra's face, then hovered a moment over Pandu. "You can't blame him, though," Bhisma told the photograph. "If it had been you, it would have been no different. You wouldn't let me take your crown away from your son. Any more than Dhritarashtra would."

Bhisma closed the cover of the book, and the photograph was gone from his sight. He suddenly felt moody, restless. He needed to leave. And he knew where he needed to go.

* * *

IV.

"Here is fine."

The chauffeur pulled over and stopped the hoverer on the edge of the thin beach. Bhisma got out slowly, wincing at the bright sunlight. He supposed he really was getting old. He walked quietly to the edge of the beach, watching the wide river in front of him run clear and cold over its sandy bottom, fish swimming lazily against its current. Bhisma removed his shoes and rolled up the bottom of his trousers. He waded out into the river, watching the fish dart away from him, feeling the cold sand clumping between his bare toes. He closed his eyes, folded his hands, and prayed.

The touch of her hand on Bhisma's shoulder was a splash of cold water. "You haven't visited me in years," Ganga said. Bhisma opened his eyes, and saw her gathering her skirts of watergrasses around her flowing legs demurely, as she stepped away from Bhisma and sat down on the bank behind him. She gazed up at him with her dark, inhuman eyes. "You've grown old," she said.

Bhisma turned and bowed respectfully in front of her. "Mother," he said.

"The mountains that feed me are cold," she said. Her voice gurgled and echoed with the rush of distant waterfalls. "It makes me feel old, too, this time of year. I do not like it much. But the life inside of me is more warm and alive now than any other time." She looked across the river - across herself - gazing with her deva-eyes at the teeming masses of fish swimming through her. "They're meeting and mating and creating. Isn't that wonderful?" Her eyelashes fluttered wetly. "I remember when I did as much with your father. He was nice, for a human. He smelled good." She glanced over at Bhisma again. "You're troubled."

"Then you've probably heard by now."

"I hear everything that the humans tell me," she said. "They warned me that you would have to choose between two princes to rule your human world." She wove water-bugs into her hair. "Yudhisthira was born of my kind. There is a part of him that is not human. Duryodhana was born of the _other _kind." She seemed to shiver for a moment, a wet shimmering flicker from head to toe. "But you raised him to have a human heart."

Bhisma, forgetting his deference, splashed toward her quickly. "What do you mean, Duryodhana was born of the 'other' kind?"

She paused, and pulled her hands out of her half-braided hair. She looked Bhisma directly in his eyes, and her face grew dark. "You know that Duryodhana and his brothers were not conceived by human means. They were not conceived by our means, either. We devas have been watching over him. We are afraid of what power might have brought him into the world, and we do not know what that power is. But we do know that only the asuras have the power to blind us to their doings." Ganga folded her hands in her lap. "But we are glad, that you and your brother's son raised that child. We believe that your love has protected him."

Bhisma sat down heavily beside her, and looked away, unable to bear her divine gaze for a moment longer. "I didn't want him to be born, you know," he said, softly. "I told Dhritarashtra to..." Bhisma hung his head sadly. "That would have been a mistake. That would have been the biggest mistake that I could have ever made. If Dhritarashtra hadn't stopped me... I still think about it, sometimes. It haunts me, I suppose. I look at Duryodhana's face and I remember that I almost stopped him from _being_."

Ganga watched her son silently. Bhisma wanted to bury his face in his hands, to hide from her. But to do so would have been even worse than enduring her silent, penetrating gaze.

Finally, Ganga said, "You may _like_ Yudhisthira more than Duryodhana, but you _love_ Duryodhana more than you love Yudhisthira."

Bhisma nodded, slowly. "I have this nightmare, that someday Duryodhana will find out about what I told Dhritarashtra the night that we discovered what was growing in the Queen's womb. I have this nightmare that he will find out, and that he'll never forgive me."

"He may not ever forgive you for choosing Yudhisthira over him," Ganga said, pointedly. Her voice rustled with watergrass and echoed loudly across the river banks. "Are you prepared for that?"

"I tell myself that I am." Bhisma shook his head slowly. "But what if this is another of my mistakes?"

"You are unsure of your choice?"

Bhisma shook his head again. "I am certain of my choice. I can feel it, in my bones. But I felt the same way that night thirty years ago."

Ganga dipped her fingers in her own waters, teasing the fish that swam up to suck at her fingertips. "And?" she asked him. "You wish for me to tell you what to do?"

"Does it matter what I do?" Bhisma asked. "I'm already fairly certain that Dhritarashtra isn't going to stand by his word to honor my choice. And that worries me, because, lately... Duryodhana..." He paused, unsure of how to put his suspicions in words. Duryodhana _what_, exactly?

"Duryodhana is cold," Ganga said.

Bhisma looked over at her curiously, but she offered no further comment.

"When I speak to him," Bhisma went on, "he has this look about him. This look like he's hiding something. I remember Vidura had that same look growing up, when he was hiding all of those trashy science-fiction magazines in his room. A look as if he had something to be ashamed of."

"Magazines?" Ganga's laughter splashed across the river valley. "Perhaps a love affair? Bhisma, your grandson may well be deeply ashamed of something entirely innocent."

"I hope it is a love affair," Bhisma said. "Somehow I would feel better about him if I knew that he _could _fall in love."

"Or he might have already, if you had not worked him so hard. The same for the other one."

Bhisma started. He was not used to hearing Ganga sound even remotely like a human mother.

"More than worrying about Duryodhana, you seem to doubt Yudhisthira."

Bhisma frowned. "Who wouldn't? He has none of Duryodhana's charisma and very little of his leadership abilities."

Ganga laughed again. She watched a waterbug dancing across the back of her flowing hand. "You chose that one anyway?" She splashed a bit as she seemed to begin to stand up, then began flowing back into the river waters. "I know that you have your reasons."

"He drinks and smokes uncontrollably," Bhisma began, checking off on his fingers, "he can't hold an audience's attention for more than thirty seconds, he's dull in person and even more boring on the media console--"

"You are not making a convincing case."

"And all of that," Bhisma finished, "is because he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. Because he actually _cares _about what happens to this planet and its people. And I don't know if I can say the same about Duryodhana. At least I can know in my bones that it's true for Yudhisthira." Bhisma paused. "We will have to do something about the smoking, though."

Ganga waded further down back into herself, turning her head toward Bhisma one last time. "It is the same to us either way," she said. "You will make the right choice. Oh Bhisma, you poor soul… You truly are my most misfortunate child. For you are the only one who still survives."

* * *

V.

It had been a long drive out to the river, and it seemed like an even longer drive back. By the time that Bhisma returned to Hastinapura, it was late in the evening. He found Sanjaya before he could find the king.

"Drupada's sons are here," Sanjaya reported. "They--"

"Tomorrow. If they're waiting to see me, I'll see them tomorrow."

"...Right. I'll tell them."

Bhisma left Sanjaya to deliver his message, without even bothering to ask where Dhritarashtra had gone off to. He had a good idea. Bhisma decided to take a shortcut through a secluded part of the gardens, hoping to save some time and breathe in some night air to clear his head--

No such luck. Bhisma's shortcut was currently occupied.

"It'sh BHISMA!" Drupada roared out, sloshing most of a bottle of wine over his robes. "Bhisma, come'an drin wih us, you old basdard." He had his arm around Drona, who laughed and hiccupped something in an old Panchalan dialect that Bhisma had not ever heard him use when sober.

"I really can't--"

"But see, this guy--" Drona made a valiant attempt to point at Drupada, and ended up smashing his hand into Drupada's beard instead. "You don't say no to this guy, he'll, he'll behead you--"

"I'll behead you--"

"'Cause he'sh the king--"

"I don't drink," Bhisma said.

"Shuddup an' sih down," Drupada snarled. "Thissis _bonding_."

Bhisma decided that he did not want to provoke the drunk old man any further, so he sat down on the grass beside where the two of them were currently sprawled. Bhisma managed to grab the bottle of wine out of Drupada's hand before the old king could manage to spill it all over Bhisma's clothes.

"Toast!" Drona cried, popping open another bottle of wine. None of the three of them had glasses, and two of them didn't care. "To..." Drona trailed off, frowning, having already forgotten what he was supposed to be toasting.

"You know what?" Drupada drawled, poking his finger into Drona's chest. "You know _what?_"

"Ow..."

"Your son," Drupada hiccuped. "He hatesh me."

"Your son," Drona answered, managing to tilt his bottle in such a way as to pour most of his wine over his legs, "ish shuppos'd to kill me." He swayed for a moment, dangerously close to falling over into Drupada's lap. "Or shome...thing."

"Oh yeah.... The deash vow." Drupada paused, then with a great deal of effort, mustered up the coordination to pronounce the word properly. "_Death vow._"

"Any chansh...?" Drona was swooning too much to finish the question.

Drupada at least had the presence of mind to squeeze his hand on Drona's shoulder tightly, bringing him temporarily back to the present. "Noooooo," Drupada answered, licking a fresh gulp of wine off his lips. "'Sh a deash vow. Can't take ih back."

"Awwww...." Drona sounded disappointed.

Bhisma waited for either of them to remember or notice that he was there. Suddenly, it seemed as if Drupada did. He turned his head blearily toward Bhisma and slurred, "You should be ha, ha, happy, Bhisma. You _won._"

Bhisma shook his head. "I don't know what--"

"Don you sit there an' act all shtupid," Drupada yelled, suddenly jabbing an accusing finger drunkenly in Bhisma's face. "You…"

Drona's chin slid down to his chest. Drupada finally let go of his shoulder, and Drona slumped over forward and fell silent.

"Look ah thish guy," Drupada hiccupped again, shaking Drona's shoulders. "Older'n me an still ca, can't holdish liquor."

"I don't think that priests are supposed to be able to hold their liquor," Bhisma said. _Older than Drupada?!_ Bhisma glanced down at Drona's slumbering, twisted body, which was mostly hidden in the nighttime shadows of the garden. One more thing that both Drona's biological records - and appearance - lied about. Drona looked barely old enough to even be Ashwatthama's father.

Drupada saw the line of Bhisma's gaze, and grinned sloppily at him. "Ish too. Older'n me an' you. He wash my fathersh' gift to me when I was ten. He wash elevenen." Drupada held up one finger, managing to barely hold it relatively straight. "One year oldern' me. Allmosh same age ash you."

Bhisma nodded slowly.

"Annow lookah you. Your gran, gran, grandsons alreadygrown up." Drupada hiccupped. "You'll have gr-gr-greatgrand....somethin's soon." He shook his head slowly, shakily. "I only have a son..." He paused for a long moment, wrinkling his brow, trying to remember something. _"Sons. _Two ovem. Mmm. 'Cause I wha, wha, waited so long..." He hiccupped again. Bhisma hoped that none of this was a warning of a more dire bodily function to come. "Gonna have my _own _grandsons soon..." Drupada smiled dreamily at his bottle of wine. " Sikhandhi's gennin' married next year. My liddle girl gennin' married!" He laughed, loud and wetly. "Gonna be a good fa-fa-father. My Sikhandhi."

"Sikhandhi..." Drona murmured sleepily.

"Well," Bhisma said brusquely, standing up hastily, "I really am on an errand--"

"WAIT!" Drupada suddenly shouted.

Bhisma waited. "Yes?" he asked, impatiently.

"I jus goh the gr-gr-greatest idea. Ever!" Drupada amazingly managed to stand up, to sway at eye-level with Bhisma. He seemed wild, excited, possessed by the stupefying greatness of his thought. "_They_ should geh married!"

"Who?"

"Thah prince, whashisname, Arjuna. He'sha good kid. Smart," Drupada said, somehow managing to successfully tap his head. "An' strong. An' good."

"Arjuna?! But he abducted you--"

"Bah," Drupada spat, waving his hand dismissively.

Somewhere below Drupada, Drona stirred and moaned. He sat up slowly, and immediately reached for another half-empty bottle of wine. "Whassit now?" he asked blearily, only vaguely aware that the conversation seemed to have progressed without him. He took a long, slow gulp from the wine bottle he was holding.

"I figgeruhed ih out!" Drupada shouted, waving his arms at Drona and swaying dangerously on his feet. "They're gonna geh married!"

"Who?" Drona and Bhisma asked, again.

"Ar, ju, na," Drupada said, punctuating each syllable with a wobbly jab of his finger into the air, "an' Draupadi."

Drona spit out wine all over Drupada's legs.

* * *

VI.

"I'm sorry," the guard said politely, "but the king won't be disturbed at this time."

Bhisma gave the guard a long look.

"B-B-But I'm sure that he can make an exception for you, Your Highness," the guard said nervously. He escorted Bhisma into the king's private chambers.

Gandhari was reclining on a couch, her fingers running over the raised surface of the pages of a book. "Bhisma?" she asked, when Bhisma approached. "If you're looking for my husband, he's on the balcony. With Duryodhana."

Bhisma appreciated the warning, but of course could not say as much.

Gandhari seemed to understand regardless. "If you're planning to attempt to talk some sense into either of them, my prayers are with you." She sniffled a little bit, in an absent-minded way. Bhisma wondered if she had been crying. Her blindfold hid her eyes, however.

When Bhisma stepped out onto the cool balcony upon which the king was sitting, Duryodhana was just stepping out. He passed by Bhisma quickly, not even bothering to look up or acknowledge Bhisma's presence. Bhisma caught a glimpse of his face, and it was dark.

When Duryodhana was gone, Dhritarashtra finally turned his head toward Bhisma and said, "The announcement is tomorrow at noon. The Panchalans have already been informed."

Bhisma nodded, even though he knew that Dhritarashtra could not see this. "The council and I will be eager to see the reaction to our choice."

"Your choice. Yes."

"You made a promise," Bhisma said, almost pleadingly. "To your brother. You promised Pandu that you would honor my choice."

Dhritarashtra turned his face toward the night sky and said, "Pandu would understand, more than anyone."

Bhisma shivered. Dhritarashtra's words only confirmed what he feared.

"It seems a good idea, making this announcement while the Panchalans are here," Dhritarashtra went on, conversationally. "Making peace with the Panchalans would create a fine historic moment, if we could find some way to symbolically do so..." He turned his face back toward Bhisma. "Marriage, perhaps? Draupadi would make a good wife for Duryodhana." He turned away from Bhisma. "I wish to retire to bed. Please leave me be."

Bhisma left without saying another word. He passed by Gandhari on his way out. She was still sitting where he had left her, her hand still resting on the same page of her book. "Bhisma," she muttered with a frown. "You didn't even _try_."

* * *

To be continued.


	14. Chapter 07: Divided

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER SEVEN: DIVIDED

* * *

"I know about Grandpa Bhisma's decision."

Those were the first words that Duryodhana said - more like angrily spat - as he stomped onto the balcony where his father was sitting. Dhritarashtra sighed and turned toward his son. Duryodhana was breathing heavily, radiating heat and the smells of fear and anger.

"Duryodhana--"

"Why not me?!" Duryodhana suddenly cried out, his voice breaking. "What was wrong with me?! What did _I _do wrong?!" Then he was back to fuming. "Grandpa Bhisma never told me that I was doing anything wrong! He only chose Yudhisthira because he's a devakin, you _know _that's what this is about, they're going to put him on my throne just because he was born with a bunch of stupid marks on his back and you all think that makes him better than me--"

"_Duryodhana_," Dhritarashtra said, sternly. He had not heard his son make such an outburst since he had been thirteen years old. It was ugly to hear, and painful to listen to.

"But it's true!" Duryodhana leaned over and grasped his father's shoulders. "That's how Grandpa Bhisma and the High Council think! They wouldn't let you have the throne just because you couldn't see! And now they're not going to let me have the throne just because I wasn't born with--"

"Duryodhana, that's enough." Dhritarashtra reached out and gently, firmly pushed Duryodhana away from him. "Do not speak like that about your grandfather."

Duryodhana was silent for a moment, then Dhritarashtra heard him slumping to the floor. He knelt in front of his father, deflated, dejected. "It's because of me, then. It's because I wasn't good enough." He trembled. "I don't understand, I don't understand. What was wrong with me? What was I missing? I don't understand." He buried his face in his hands, muffling his voice. "I worked so hard... I did everything that Grandpa Bhisma taught me to..."

"Duryodhana, sometimes..." Dhritarashtra trailed off, praying that what he was about to say wouldn't come out as trite as it sounded in his head. "Sometimes even when we want something very badly, even when we work hard towards that goal, even then--"

"But that's not _fair_!" Duryodhana protested angrily, standing up again. "And besides, you promised me! Grandpa Bhisma promised me, too! You both promised me that I would become the next king!"

"That was before we knew that Pandu--"

"_Yudhisthira can't do it_! The Council only supports him because he's a devakin, but the Parliament doesn't support him, the people don't support him, you know as well as I do what a weak ruler he'll make!"

"Lord Bhisma," Dhritarashtra said, slowly, pointedly, "has made this decision after many years - decades, even - of careful thought. Are you accusing your grandfather of making an unwise decision?"

"Yes!" Duryodhana breathed in and out heavily. "I should be the one on that throne. You know that I should be the one on that throne."

Dhritarashtra said nothing. What good would it do, to admit that he agreed? It would only add fuel to the fire in Duryodhana's heart.

"Just like you knew that you should have been the one on the throne instead of Pandu," Duryodhana pressed on, relentlessly. "But Grandpa Bhisma chose Uncle Pandu anyway."

Dhritarashtra's lower lip trembled. "That was not Bhisma's decision. That was the High Council."

"They're all the same devils." Duryodhana's voice was clenched and angry. "You have to stop this, Father! This is unjust and you know it. This is _not right _and you know it. You were the one who always told me that a king has to stand up and do the right thing, no matter what the sacrifice!"

"I made a promise to my brother," Dhritarashtra said. His voice sounded hollow, even to his own ears. "It would be wrong to break it."

"No, Father." Duryodhana reached out and grasped his father's hands tightly in his own. "I love you, Father," he said, his voice breaking. "I love you and I promise you that I will be a king worthy of you. But please, please, please don't let them do this to us. Don't sit down and let them deny us our rights any longer. Not just for us, but for all of Kuru." He slid his hands away from Dhritarashtra's. "This planet is not safe in Yudhisthira's hands. He isn't strong enough to protect it. _You know that._"

Dhritarashtra didn't say anything. He couldn't say anything.

Duryodhana stepped away from him. "Grandpa Bhisma is here," he said, softly. Then he left without another word.

Dhritarashtra heard Bhisma approaching him. "The announcement is tomorrow at noon. The Panchalans have already been informed," he said.

* * *

II.

Duryodhana slumped down on top of his bed and buried his face in his hands. He had not cried in front of his father, but it had taken every bit of self-control that he had in order to not do so. Now, he was spent and exhausted. He leaned forward and wept bitterly.

He had told many lies over the years - small lies, white lies - to his mother, to his father, to Grandpa Bhisma, to Uncle Vidura. But he had not told a single lie while with his father on the balcony that night. And he had never lied about how much he loved any of them.

He deserved the throne. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that he was a better king than Yudhisthira.

_Then why can't Grandpa Bhisma see that?!_

Duryodhana felt his tears coming hot and fast, his face contorting with grief and rage. Thirty years - his entire lifetime - spent worshipping and adoring Grandpa Bhisma, laboring long and hard over so many sleepless nights to finish the perfect homework assignment, the perfect speech, the perfect budget plan, the perfect anything. A lifetime spent watching for, desperate for, those rare and wonderful words of approval.

_And he doesn't care--_

He chose Yudhisthira instead.

_I loved him and I listened to him and _

he chose Yudhisthira instead

_I am strong I am loved I am smart and _

he chose Yudhisthira instead

_and maybe I lied to him sometimes but I had to because of this ice that started _

when Yudhisthira came

_and he always loved me the best_

until Yudhisthira came

_and I was the greatest swordsman on Kuru_

until Bhima came

_and I was the strong and great warrior who would protect this family and bring them fame and honor_

until Arjuna came

_and everyone thinks they're so great and they're so special just because they were born as devakin and it's not fair it's not my fault I was born with ice just because I was born_

from the asuras--

Duryodhana did not realize that he was screaming and tearing apart his pillow and beddings, until there were shreds of fabric and feathers floating all around him.

Duryodhana forced himself to calm down. He closed his mouth, licked his lips, and wondered if the guards posted outside his door would enter to see what was the matter. After a few moments, they didn't.

"You were right," Duryodhana croaked hoarsely, at the shadows that no longer came to visit him. "The devakin. They are my enemies. They were created just to take away what's mine."

_Bhisma_, the shadows had said, on that night long ago, _pawn of the devas. Yudhisthira, created to deny you your destiny._

Duryodhana clenched the ruins of his pillow in his hands. Ice crackled beneath his fingertips. He _loved _his grandfather. He _loved _his father. And he had faith in both of them, still, even though perhaps it was foolish to believe in them any longer.

Duryodhana laughed, bitterly. Blind, foolish love. Of course, he was just as susceptible to it as any other human. He would wait, then. He would believe in his father - for one more night - and he would wait. Perhaps his father would finally stand up to Bhisma during the announcement tomorrow.

Duryodhana hoped that such would be the case. If not, though...

_The day will come when you will have to fight for what is rightfully yours, _the shadows had also said.

A part of Duryodhana still prayed that such a day would never come. A part of him still prayed that he could not trust what the shadow-things had said to him. A part of him still prayed, fervently, that his father would protect him, that Grandpa Bhisma would give him his crown and cry and tell him how proud he was, that Yudhisthira would just slink back into the forest from which he had come and vanish forever.

* * *

III.

Yudhisthira spent much of the following morning trying to ignore the distinct sensation that his heart had migrated to the back of his throat.

"It won't be me," he moaned for the umpteenth time, as tailors and dressers pawed at his robes and the ornate monstrosity on top of his head. "If nothing else, at least _you_ can look good in an outfit like this."

"Nobody can look good in an outfit like this," Duryodhana answered bitterly, staring at himself in a mirror. His robes were identical to Yudhisthira's - layers of gaudy color upon gaudy color, weighed down with useless jewels - and the thing on top of his head, strange and angular shapes of contrasting hues, looked more like it had been designed by a pretentious, postmodern architect rather than a hatmaker. "Who chose these awful things, anyway?"

"Tradition, Your Highness," one of Duryodhana's tailors said. "These robes were worn by your great-grandfather when he--"

"They haven't aged well," Duryodhana cut off the tailor, curtly.

"It won't be me," Yudhisthira moaned, again.

Duryodhana turned toward him, and flashed him his best charismatic grin. "Don't be so sure," he said. "I heard the odds in the palace betting pool are in your favor."

"Actually..." Yudhisthira shuffled his feet nervously, as two more servants fastened his not-quite-hat to his hair. "The odds in the palace betting pool are one hundred to one for me..."

"How do you know that?"

Yudhisthira coughed, nervously.

Duryodhana tsked. "One vice at a time, please." He laughed. "Remember our promise? Whatever happens now, you and I are going to go out and celebrate _together._ With drinking. I won't have you dying of alcohol poisoning on my first official night as the king, understood?"

Uncle Vidura popped his head in and out of the dressing parlor almost too fast for Yudhisthira to even register that he had been there. "Five minutes," he said.

As if on cue, the tailors and dressers fell back and vanished. Yudhisthira was left alone in the room with Duryodhana, his heart thumping in his throat. Duryodhana, however, looked calm and confident. As always. Yudhisthira envied him.

Duryodhana glanced over at his cousin. "You have rings under your eyes," he said. He glanced around the room, frowning. "Did that makeup woman leave already?"

"I couldn't sleep," Yudhisthira admitted.

"Neither could I." Duryodhana reached out and grasped Yudhisthira's hand, squeezing it tightly. "But this is it, huh?"

"Yes... This is it." Yudhisthira took a deep breath. "Don't forget our promise."

"Never."

Yudhisthira squeezed Duryodhana's hand back. He remembered the promise that he and his cousin had made to each other on a starlit night decades ago. _You are my family and my dear friend and I will love you forever_, he thought, gazing at Duryodhana silently.

Duryodhana turned his head and grinned at Yudhisthira, as if reading his thoughts. Yudhisthira felt his heart sink a little bit closer back toward its normal spot in his chest. It felt good, knowing that Duryodhana felt the same way that he did.

* * *

IV.

Arjuna swallowed nervously when he saw the rows upon rows of console cameras lined up along both sides of the Great Hall, ominously humming black and silver contraptions perched upon a veritable forest of spindly black legs. The reporters and photographers swarming around in that forest, despite the hungry, predatory look in their eyes, looked positively benign by comparison.

When he saw the cameras, Nakula brushed a lock of his hair back from his forehead and urgently hissed at Arjuna, "How do I look?"

"Identical to Sahadeva."

"Ha, ha. Very funny." Nakula pouted for a moment, then remembered that he was in front of the cameras, and looked princely again. Behind him, Sahadeva had the presence of mind to cease humming whatever strange, self-composed tune he had been humming for the past thirty minutes.

Bhima led Arjuna through the crowd gathering in the Great Hall - it was rather easy for Arjuna to follow along behind Bhima's considerable wake, after all - and towards the seating area on the far end. "Mother sits opposite of us," he mumbled, reminding himself as he walked, "Uncle Vidura three seats down, the Prime Minister on our side, the High Council Chief with Dusshasana, the--"

"_HEY, OVER HERE!_"

Bhima stopped in his tracks. Most of the crowd paused, actually, at the sound of the very un-prince-like voice cutting across the Hall. Arjuna turned his head and saw Sikhandhi, standing in front of a row of empty seats and waving his arms enthusiastically. "Hey Arjuna, hey Bhima!" he shouted across the hall. "_Come and sit over here! Best seats in the house!_"

Bhima shrugged. "I think those were supposed to be our seats anyway."

But as they approached Sikhandhi, Arjuna saw that he wasn't alone. Draupadi and Dhristadumnya were sitting down on the end of a row of seats behind Sikhandhi, glaring down at Arjuna with identical expressions of cold, sullen fury. Then Arjuna saw Sikhandhi turn and say something to Ashwatthama, who was sitting beside him. Ashwatthama laughed and answered in Panchalan. Arjuna was relieved to be able to focus on Ashwatthama instead of the other two sitting behind him.

Sikhandhi was running forward to meet them before they could reach the seats. He bypassed Bhima completely - not an easy feat - and threw his arms around Arjuna, as if he were hugging his own long-lost brother. "Arjuna!" he cried out, whirling him around. "I missed you so much--!"

"You aren't mad at me?" Arjuna managed to gasp, once Sikhandhi had put him down and he had found his footing again.

"Huh? For what?"

_Unbelievable, _Arjuna though numbly, as he allowed Sikhandhi and Bhima to lead him over to the seats. Ashwatthama was already helping Sahadeva step over an empty seat to reach the row that they would be sitting in. "You aren't sitting with Mr. Dhaumya?" Sahadeva asked.

Ashwatthama shook his head. "Sikhandhi invited me to sit here."

Sikhandhi threw his arm around Ashwatthama, who gamely managed not to flinch. "Ashwatthama and I are like brothers," he declared. "And our parents are like and old married couple who finally realized how pointless it is that one of them has been sleeping on the couch for the past decade. Or two."

Ashwatthama laughed nervously, clearly not agreeing at all. But Sikhandhi seemed not to notice. He pulled his arm away from Ashwatthama and sat down beside Bhima. Arjuna crawled around Bhima's knees and noticed, with a sinking feeling of dismay, that now he was the only one left standing. And the only empty seat left was between Sikhandhi and Ashwatthama, right in front of Draupadi. Arjuna pointedly did not look behind himself as he sat down.

Sikhandhi, of course, turned immediately around and loudly scolded his younger siblings. "You two are being rude," he admonished. "You haven't even greeted our hosts yet."

Dhristadumnya turned his head and glared at the wall to his left. But Draupadi nodded her head stiffly down at Arjuna and said tersely, "Thank you for having us."

Arjuna stared up at her. She was wearing a formal dress almost the exact same color as her blue-black hair, which hugged and flowed down the length of her body--

_Do not stare at her cleavage do not stare at her cleavage do not--_

"You're welcome," Bhima finally said, a bit pointedly. Arjuna started, and turned away from Draupadi without saying anything. He had forgotten that Draupadi should have been addressing Bhima in the first place. Bhima was older than Arjuna, after all.

"Don't mind them," Sikhandhi said, leaning over toward Arjuna. "Draupadi's just upset that you humiliated her and her little spacefleet. And Dhristadumnya is upset because we were supposed to meet with your grandfather last night for a private audience, but he cancelled."

"Grandpa Bhisma did?"

"I'm sure he had too much to do, preparing for today," Sikhandhi said, sympathetically. "Still, I have to admit, I'm dying to meet this 'Bhisma' that my father is always going on about."

"There they are," Ashwatthama said, suddenly, pointing across the Hall. Arjuna looked and saw his mother and Queen Gandhari enter and take their seats at the head of the Hall, holding each others' hands. Behind them filed in Vidura, Drupada, Mr. Drona and Kripi, Mr. Kripa, and the Prime Minister and the Chief of the High Council. Drupada looked up and across at them. Arjuna saw Ashwatthama stiffen and look away. Then Drupada looked directly at Sikhandhi, and winked.

Sikhandhi laughed. "Oh, no."

"What?" Arjuna asked nervously.

"I've seen that look on Father's face before. He's playing matchmaker again. I wonder who will be the victims this time. Speaking of which..." He rummaged around inside his formal robes, and then triumphantly pulled out a fingernail-sized datadisc. "Here," he said, handing it over to Bhima. "You're all invited to my wedding. Six months from now."

"You're getting married?" Nakula asked.

"Yes, and it's all my father's fault," Sikhandhi responded cheerfully. He turned to Ashwatthama. "You should be grateful to him, too. My father is the one who hooked your parents up with each other."

"Thankful. Right." Ashwatthama looked away from them again.

"I don't know if I would ever want to get married," Sahadeva commented. "You wouldn't be able to go on dates with anyone anymore."

"But princes can take more than one wife," Nakula pointed out. "Like Father did."

"I'm going to have five wives before I die," Sikhandhi said, leaning back contentedly in his seat.

"That's _sick,_" Draupadi said from behind Arjuna.

"How so?" Bhima asked, turning around to face her.

Arjuna listened for a moment as Sikhandhi and his brothers and Draupadi started a debate about a topic that he absolutely did not want to be thinking about. Instead, he leaned over toward Ashwatthama, who was sitting tense and stiff with his hands clenched in his lap. "You keep staring at Drupada," Arjuna whispered.

"Is it that obvious?" Ashwatthama asked, with a wan smile. He sighed. "I'm sorry, I'm just not used to..." He trailed off.

"Not used to what?"

"Hating." Ashwatthama's face darkened. "It hurts. Hating someone _hurts._ But I don't know if I can make myself stop."

Arjuna didn't know what to say. Finally he swallowed and said, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault." Ashwatthama shook his head. "You did the right thing, bringing Drupada here. My father asked you to."

"I agree," Draupadi suddenly said, leaning forward between them.

Arjuna started. A cascade of her curled dark hair nearly fell right in his face. She turned her dark eyes toward him, her painted lips pursed. "You may be an idiot, Prince Arjuna, but as long as you were fulfilling your _dakshina_, then..." She seemed to momentarily choke on her own words, her face grimacing with distaste. But the moment passed. "You were acting honorably. And I suppose I should not be angry with you."

"Uh," Arjuna said, eloquently. Was this an apology? Arjuna stared at Draupadi's face, and willed himself not to wonder what her breasts looked like when she was leaning over that way.

She raised one trimmed eyebrow at him. "Is that all that you have to say for yourself?"

"Ummm...."

Draupadi sighed impatiently, and straightened up, settling back into her seat.

"Smooth," Bhima whispered, rather loudly, from the other side of Sikhandhi.

Arjuna opened his mouth to come up with what he hoped was a witty reply, but then the Hall fell silent, and Arjuna realized that he had been saved from having to make a clever retort. All faces turned toward the front of the Hall, where Bhisma was entering, leading the king's hand as the two of them marched stately across the Hall. Yudhisthira and Duryodhana followed behind them, hand in hand.

Suddenly, Arjuna felt a hand clench at his knee. It was Sikhandhi's. Arjuna turned and saw Sikhandhi, eyes wide and mouth working silently, his face lit up in ghastly colors as the cameras lining the bottom level of the Hall flashed ceaselessly, beaming images of Yudhisthira and Duryodhana and their ridiculous matching hats all over the planet. Sikhandhi's eyes were fixed on Bhisma, his burning gaze following the old man as he walked across the hall.

"Arjuna," Sikhandhi croaked. His strong, viselike hand threatened to crush Arjuna's kneecap. Arjuna winced in pain. "Arjuna, who is that down there?" Sikhandhi whispered. "Who is that leading the king?"

"That's Grandpa Bhisma," Arjuna said, trying in vain to pry Sikhandhi's fingers off his knee without being conspicuous about it.

"_That's Bhisma_?"

Suddenly Bhima's hand was there too, mercifully pulling Sikhandhi's hand off Arjuna's knee. Arjuna breathed a sigh of relief as Bhima forcefully but subtly twisted Sikhandhi's arm. "Is something the matter?" Bhima asked, darkly.

Arjuna sensed more than saw Dhristadumnya behind him, leaning forward and about to tell Bhima to let go of his brother. Arjuna saw the reporters down below, a few of them beginning to point up at the chairs where they were sitting. _A scene, _he thought, beginning to panic. _We're going to make a scene!_

But Sikhandhi, thankfully, defused the scene before it could begin. He laughed softly, and pulled his hand out of Bhima's. "I'm sorry," he whispered, embarrassed. "Sometimes I have these moments, my head feels funny and I…"

"They're sitting," Ashwatthama said suddenly. "This is it."

The cameras ceased their flashing. Duryodhana and Yudhisthira stood side-by-side, still holding hands, facing the throne where Dhritarashtra slowly sat down, Bhisma taking a seat beside him.

The Hall was silent. Arjuna held his breath.

Dhritarashtra folded his hands in his lap, and spoke.

"The kingdom shall be divided," he said.

* * *

V.

For a moment, Yudhisthira thought that he hadn't heard correctly. "What?" he mumbled, feeling the floor of the Hall suddenly lurch sickeningly beneath him.

"_What?!_" Duryodhana demanded, angrily pulling his hand away from Yudhisthira's.

"The kingdom shall be divided," Dhritarashtra said again, his voice clear and cold, "into two equal halves."

This time, rather than greeting the king's words with shocked silence, the Hall burst into an uproar. Yudhisthira felt his head swimming. He tried to focus on the scene in front of him, but then he saw the shocked, angry look on Grandpa Bhisma's face, and understood in an instant what had happened. _This wasn't Grandpa Bhisma's choice. He didn't honor Grandpa Bhisma's choice!_

"No," Yudhisthira mumbled.

"This is insane!" Duryodhana cried out, disregarding all pretense of formality and politeness. Cameras snapped and flashed as he ripped his hat off his head and threw it angrily to the ground in front of him. Leftover hairpins stuck out of his handsome locks at random intervals. "What are you going to do, make two completely separate governments? Will there be a border?! What in the names of the gods--?!"

_A border, _Yudhisthira thought, his head swimming. _Passports. Visas. Two Parliaments? Two Prime Ministers? What about the courts? The spacefleet? The military? The police? _

"Everything that there is, will be divided equally," Dhritarashtra went on calmly, his electronically amplified voice echoing across the loud, uproarious hall. "Duryodhana will rule the half of the planet with its capital here, in Hastinapura. Yudhisthira will take half of the existing kingdom and establish himself a new capital in the southern hemisphere."

"The _southern_ hemisphere?!" Bhima roared angrily from the seats above the Hall, his voice cutting across the din. He stood up and stomped angrily, a gesture which caused the entire Hall to shake. "There's nothing but ice and fish down there! There's no land!"

"There are islands," Dhritarashtra answered. "And a native population."

"This is insane!" Duryodhana cried out again. "This is unheard of!" He stepped angrily in front of his father. "You can't cut my kingdom in half just because you feel sorry for _him_!"

By now the reporters were already beginning to break free of their cordoned-off area, heading in a wave toward Yudhisthira. Yudhisthira stood in a daze as his bodyguards appeared and began pressing around him, while the reporters began screaming questions at him. His head was pounding and his mouth was dry. _This is insane, _he thought, echoing Duryodhana's words in his head. _This is unheard of!_

"No," he mumbled, "No no no no..."

"There will be a coronation one week from today," Dhritarashtra said, speaking over the chaos that had overtaken the Hall. "I have spoken. That is all."

"Father, _wait!_" Duryodhana cried out. But it was no use. Dhritarashtra was already leaving, and the decision was already final.

* * *

VI.

"Are. You. Insane?!" Bhisma hissed. He followed behind Dhritarashtra as the king exited out the back passageway behind the Hall.

"I could no more deny my son his birthright than I could break a vow to my brother," Dhritarashtra answered calmly. "This was the only solution."

" 'That which is united,' " Vidura quoted, catching up to them quickly, " 'let no man, god, or asura rip asunder.' "

Dhritarashtra sighed impatiently.

"That's from the charter," Vidura said, urgently, "written when Kuru was united under Hastinapura for the first time." When Dhritarashtra still did not reply, Vidura added, desperately, "Father would never have wanted the planet divided."

Dhritarashtra suddenly stopped in his tracks. His fists clenched at his sides. "Father was a fool," he hissed, and then stomped angrily away from Vidura and Bhisma.

* * *

VII.

"The equator will mark the boundary of your territory," Sanjaya said, pointing at the dotted line ringing the flickering blue-and-green globe projected in front of them. "The largest habitable island is Khandava, in the eastern hemisphere. There's a large fishing port here." Sanjaya pointed at a cold and miserable-looking dot, located on an island that was not much more than a cold and miserable-looking dot itself, not too far from where the ice of the antarctic icecap began curlings its seeking tendrils out over Kuru's vast southern oceans. "It would probably be the best location to establish your capitol and any central government offices."

Yudhisthira sat and stared at the flickering projection, his mind and his body numb. His mother sat beside him silently. All around him sat his four brothers - Bhima and Nakula fuming in silent harmony, Arjuna fidgeting nervously, Sahadeva staring mournfully at the sad little dot of Khandava on the projected globe.

"An expedition to accompany you to Khandava is already being formed," Sanjaya went on. "It would be best if you left immediately after the coronation next week. That gives you one week to pack, and to plan, and to prepare."

Yudhisthira said nothing, and Sanjaya waited patiently.

"That is fine, Sanjaya," Yudhisthira finally said, and Sanjaya left.

* * *

VIII.

Drupada cornered Bhisma before he could enter the conference room.

"The boy," Drupada breathed quietly. "I assume that Drona has told you everything?"

_Ashwatthama_, Bhisma thought. "When we first arrested him. He told me the truth, although I was reluctant to believe it. The High Council knows. Ashwatthama has been chipped, the same as any devakin, and the Council is keeping a careful eye on him."

Drupada gave Bhisma a long, long look. "Who knows about his Gift?"

"Me. And select members of the Council. Dhaumya. Nobody else. His records are kept highly classified."

"Not Dhritarashtra?" Drupada asked, accusingly.

Bhisma bristled. "That's not--"

"It should be a king's prerogative to decide the fate of that boy. Or at least to know."

Bhisma gave Drupada a condescending smile. "That worked out well for you, didn't it?"

Drupada's face was dark. "You seem to underestimate the danger that that boy's very existence constitutes. A chip in his ear hardly seems to count as a safety measure." Drupada's whisper was rough and low. "A king has a duty to protect his people and his planet from unnecessary risks. When I was called upon to decide that boy's fate, I made the only decision that I _could_ make. It was within my rights, but it was also the right thing to do." His eyes narrowed. "I expected Ashwatthama's father to disagree with me. I never, however, expected the same from you."

When Bhisma said nothing, Drupada scowled at him and said, "You've grown soft."

"Believe me when I say that such is not the case."

Drupada snorted. "You indulge your grandson in letting him buy a dangerous criminal from me. You indulge your nephew in letting him split apart your kingdom and destroy everything that you and your brothers worked for. You--"

Bhisma stepped - ahead of Drupada, which was deliberately rude - past a heavy wooden door and into a conference room where Dhaumya, Drona, Kripa, Kripi, and Ashwatthama were already waiting for them. Drupada closed his mouth immediately and pushed indignantly past Bhisma, seating himself at the head of the conference table.

"I agree that Ashwatthama is ready to pass his final exams," Dhaumya said as Bhisma sat himself down, continuing a conversation that must have started before Bhisma had arrived. "He can be appointed Yudhisthira's priest within a week, and accompany Yudhisthira's party to Khandava--"

"No," Drupada said.

Drona rolled his eyes and muttered, "Here it comes." Ashwatthama looked down at his lap, his cheeks flushing bright red. Bhisma could not tell if this was from anger, embarrassment, or both.

"I do not think," Drupada said, "that Ashwatthama should be stationed so far from Council headquarters. For safety reasons."

"Have you asked the Council their opinion?" Drona asked, pointedly.

Almost simultaneously, Dhaumya snorted angrily. "I _sit _on the Council--"

"Do you speak for all of them?"

"In my official capacity, _yes._"

"What about the two kings?" Kripa asked, reasonably. He turned toward Bhisma. "Shouldn't we wait to hear what they have to say? Dividing up the royal family's priests is not a decision reached so casually."

Bhisma looked up at the timepiece mounted on the wall across from him. "Our two illustrious kings are apparently running quite late--"

"Not much later than _you_," Duryodhana pointed out, dragging Yudhisthira by his arm into the conference room. Yudhisthira pushed the heavy wooden doors shut behind him and took his place at the head of the table beside Duryodhana. "By the way, just to save everyone the trouble, Yudhisthira and I decided that we're going to arm-wrestle to determine who gets to keep the current Prime Minister."

"We'll have a dice tournament for the rest of the cabinet," Yudhisthira added.

Bhisma hadn't thought that Yudhisthira was even capable of joking. About anything. At least, Bhisma hoped that he was joking. "Lord Dhaumya has informed us that Ashwatthama could be appointed as your priest before you depart for Khandava," Bhisma told Yudhisthira. "Does this sound agreeable to you?"

Drupada seemed about to object again, when suddenly Duryodhana leaned forward and said, "Wait a minute."

Ashwatthama jerked his head up, startled.

"What if _I _would like to keep Ashwatthama as my royal priest?" Duryodhana pointed out. "None of you even asked me what I wanted."

The entire table fell silent. Yudhisthira blinked at Duryodhana, startled.

Dhaumya cleared his throat and asked, "Am I displeasing to you, Your Highness?"

"Oh, no," Duryodhana answered quickly, "It is just that..." He turned his eyes toward Ashwatthama. "Ashwatthama is my dear, close friend. I couldn't bear the thought of him being stationed half a world away from me."

Ashwatthama opened and closed his mouth, apparently all too aware that there was no acceptable way for him to deny this. Drona looked at his son, shot a glare in Duryodhana's general direction, looked at his son again, then finally jerked his thumb toward Dhaumya and said, "There's no way that this old man could survive the journey to Khandava."

Dhaumya laughed. "Well said, well said."

Bhisma breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was a good thing that Dhaumya had a sense of humor. Well, Bhisma would see that Drona paid for that remark later.

But Drona wasn't finished. "I am still teaching Prince Arjuna," he said. "I still have much to teach him. Of course I will accompany him to Khandava. And my family - and I - wish to stay together. Please, Your Highness."

"I agree," Yudhisthira said, placing his hand on Duryodhana's shoulder. "It makes sense for Drona and his family to come with me. Lord Dhaumya can stay here. He has served your family for many years--"

"_Our_ family," Duryodhana corrected Yudhisthira. "He is as much your priest as mine. He would do well to stay with you."

Yudhisthira withdrew his hand, slowly.

"Although of course," Duryodhana added, "I would like to hear what Ashwatthama has to say."

Ashwatthama suddenly looked very pale. Bhisma felt his hands clenching into fists. Perhaps Duryodhana was too old to be spanked, but Bhisma had never been so tempted. There was no way that Ashwatthama could refuse the king's preference. To do so would have been to irreversibly offend Duryodhana.

"I--" Ashwatthama began.

Duryodhana didn't even wait for him to finish. He turned to Yudhisthira and asked sharply, "You would be happy to have Dhaumya in your court, wouldn't you?"

Yudhisthira nodded slowly. There was also no way that he could say no to this question, without gravely insulting Dhaumya.

"Then it's settled," Duryodhana said, standing up quickly.

Fortunately, Drona and Drupada also stood up in near perfect unison. "Now wait just a minute!" Drona shouted, while Drupada growled, "Young man..."

"Sorry, but Yudhisthira and I have a meeting with the Minister of Defense. I'm sure that Grandpa Bhisma wouldn't mind if we sawed him in half," Duryodhana said, having already succeeded in dragging Yudhisthira halfway out of the room. Yudhisthira had a mildly stunned look on his face, as if he were about to be hit by an oncoming hoverer.

Bhisma stood up quickly. He reached for Yudhisthira's free arm, unsure of what exactly he planned to do - perhaps pull both kings back into the room, dislocating Yudhisthira's shoulder while he was at it? - but Duryodhana was faster, and the two of them were gone before Bhisma could properly react.

Bhisma turned back toward the table, only to find Drupada right in his face. "Are you going to let him get away with that?" Drupada hissed, angrily.

"It's all right," Ashwatthama suddenly said, loudly, from the other side of the table.

Drupada sat down slowly as Ashwatthama continued. "I would be honored to stay in Hastinapura with His Majesty. But if my family chooses to accompany Prince Arjuna to Khandava... That is all right." He smiled calmly. "Papa always said that he wanted to do some traveling."

Bhisma stared at Ashwatthama and remembered the brave, slight young man who had stared down both Duryodhana and Bhima at the weapons contest.

"Ashwatthama," Kripi suddenly said. She had been silent during the entire meeting. Ashwatthama looked up at her sharply, and she said, "Please leave the room for a moment."

"Mother--"

"_Please._"

Ashwatthama stood up slowly and left, closing the heavy wooden doors behind himself.

Drona paced anxiously around one end of the table while Kripi continued speaking calmly. "We often had to leave Ashwatthama alone for extended periods of time while he was growing up. But that was never more than a few days at time. He seemed stable enough, but..."

"But that was different," Drona muttered angrily from behind her. "It's not the same as leaving him alone on a royal court. On _Duryodhana_'s court."

Bhisma thought that he should have felt insulted by the implications dripping from Drona's voice, if only he didn't half-believe that Drona may have been right. Bhisma did not like the thought of Duryodhana and Ashwatthama together. If Duryodhana found out about Ashwatthama's Gift....

Dhaumya was shaking his head slowly, sadly. "You know, don't you?" he said, looking straight at Drona. "The Council is acting under the official recommendation that Ashwatthama never be separated from his parents. We fear that he will destabilize otherwise."

Drona stopped pacing, and stood with his shoulders slumped. Kripa stood up and gently placed one hand on Drona's shoulder. "You would have never wanted to leave him anyway, right?"

Drona shook his head.

Drupada sat like a dark thundercloud on one side of Bhisma. "I agree," he rumbled. "I agree with Kuru's Council, as distasteful as I find them." Dhaumya had the good grace not to bristle. "The only way that I can consciously allow the continued existence of that boy," Drupada went on, "is knowing that his father, at least, is keeping careful watch over him."

"Then it's settled," Bhisma said, echoing Duryodhana's words. Inside, however, he was seething. In one swift move, Duryodhana had managed to separate Arjuna from his teacher.

Dhaumya muttered something into a comm that he pulled out of his robes, and a moment later, Ashwatthama was let back into the room. He stood behind Bhisma, one hand still on the handle of the door that he had walked through. Across the room, Drona managed to smile in a warm way and said, "Ashwatthama, your mother and I have decided to stay in Hastinapura with you."

Ashwatthama seemed to twitch. "You what?"

"Your mother and I are going to stay--"

"I heard," Ashwatthama said. For a moment, Drona seemed taken aback. Bhisma wondered if he had ever heard his son snap at him before. Ashwatthama clenched his fist around the door handle and mumbled, "Again."

"What was that?" Drona asked, a bit sharply.

"I ruined everything for you _again_," Ashwatthama snapped, and then stepped angrily back through the door, slamming it behind him.

* * *

IX.

It was the middle of the night, and the Hall was dark and silent, when Duryodhana finally was able to sit down on the throne that his father had used that morning.

Duryodhana sighed and leaned back on the silk cushions, savoring the sensation of the golden carvings upon which his arms rested. All his life, he had been watching his father sit on this throne, waiting for the day when it would be his turn to take the seat and gaze out upon the Hall before him. Duryodhana stroked the golden armrests lovingly. After the coronation in one week, the throne would be his.

Unfortunately, he would only have half a kingdom at his feet.

"Your Highness?"

Yuyutsu entered slowly, almost on tiptoe, all too aware that he was sneaking around in a way that he probably shouldn't be. The door behind the throne that he had used to enter the Hall creaked in a suspicious way.

" 'Your Majesty' would be more appropriate," Duryodhana said airily, as Yuyutsu walked in front of his - his! – throne, and bowed low.

"But your coronation isn't for another week," Karna pointed out bluntly, stepping up behind Yuyutsu. He did not bow. "Why did you send Yuyutsu to bring me here?"

"To ask you a question," Duryodhana said, leaning regally forward.

Karna raised one eyebrow at him. "And you _had _to be sitting on a throne to do so?"

"Why not?" Duryodhana stared down at Karna, daring him with his eyes to challenge him again.

Karna shrugged. Something in his eyes did not so much submit to Duryodhana's challenge as much as dismiss it entirely. "If it means that much to you. You're the king. I suppose."

"Nice of you to notice." Duryodhana laughed and leaned back in his throne. "I wanted to ask you about the _brahmastra_," he said.

Karna started. "The _brahmastra_?!"

Duryodhana grinned at him, a bit hungrily. "So you do know it."

"Yes," Karna said, carefully, slowly. "My teacher taught it to me. It was one of the last things that he taught me before he..." Karna seemed to sigh out his nose. "Before he finished teaching me."

"Finished?" Duryodhana waited for Karna to elaborate.

"Yes. Finished. He dismissed me and will not see me again."

"Is there a particular reason for that?"

"Yes," Karna answered, and then fell silent. Duryodhana fumed silently. There was a story here, an important story, one that Karna was not willing to tell him.

"Your Highness," Karna said, watching Duryodhana's face, perhaps sensing his anger, "I truly am sorry, Your Highness. But out of respect for my beloved teacher's wishes, I really can't tell you any more."

Duryodhana shook his head, quickly. "No matter. I only want assurance that you truly do know the _brahmastra_."

Karna nodded, but then added, "You do understand that the _brahmastra_ is something that must never actually be used, don't you, Your Highness?"

"Of course, of course," Duryodhana laughed. "Indulge me in this silliness, please. I was only feeling envious that one of Yudhisthira's brothers had been taught the _brahmastra_..." Duryodhana watched Karna's face darken. "Yes, haven't you heard? Arjuna commands that _brahmastra_."

Karna started again. "But he's so young!"

"That is dangerous," Yuyutsu commented softly, finally straightening up out of his bow.

Duryodhana waved his hand dismissively. "I trust Arjuna not to do anything foolish. As I trust you, Karna," he said pointedly, "to keep my best interests in mind."

"Of course," Karna said, fervently. "Anything for you, Your Highness." But he still would not bow.

Duryodhana dismissed Karna and Yuyutsu with a wave of his hand. As they left, he slumped down into his throne and frowned at himself. He had Karna's love, but did not yet have his obedience.... Likewise, Duryodhana suspected that he had Yuyutsu's obedience, but doubted that he had Yuyutsu's love.

And Duryodhana did not want to rule merely half a kingdom for the rest of his life. His thoughts raced ceaselessly around in his head, desperately thinking of ways that he could ensure that would not have to.

* * *

X.

"Have you seen Mother?" Yudhisthira asked Bhima the next morning, while carefully folding layers of puffed bubble-wrap around his mother's favorite vase.

"She went off with Aunt Gandhari somewhere," Bhima said, lifting up a heavy couch as if it were as light as air and carrying it across the room, so that a nearby servant could scurry forward and quickly vacuum the patch of long-neglected carpet he had uncovered. "Which means that they're probably plotting something."

Yudhisthira wondered, not for the first time that week, whether someone was about to be married off to Princess Draupadi. And that someone would _have _to be either him or Duryodhana. It would have been unheard of for any of his younger brothers or cousins to be married first.

Yudhisthira straightened up and cracked his back. "Your Majesty," a servant said, watching him, "I can take care of--"

"Don't call me 'Your Majesty' yet," Yudhisthira said, taking his leave of the room. He had to find his mother. Really, it was her job to be overseeing the packing of their apartments anyway. Yudhisthira had more important things to do, like trying to find a replacement for the Minister of Finance that he had lost to Duryodhana in a game of dice the night before. At the time, it had seemed like the only fair option for dividing up the cabinet.

Yudhisthira checked all of the garden balconies and tea rooms, searching for his mother. Instead, however, he found Princess Draupadi, leaning out on a balustrade overlooking a wave-swept cliff below, her feet up on the lower railing of the balcony.

Yudhisthira approached her respectfully. "That's dangerous," he said.

She turned her head toward him, startled. The ocean wind whipped her long dark hair around her face. She hopped down from the railing - a rather un-princess-like move - and turned to face Yudhisthira, one hand entwined in her hair to keep it from blowing in her face. "I am hardly so foolish that I would fall into the ocean, Your Highness."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Enjoying," she said, turning her head back toward the ocean spread out below her. "We've always been so far from the ocean in Kampilya." She turned back toward him. "By the way, Your Highness, might I inquire as to the whereabouts of your brother?"

"Which one?"

"Arjuna."

Yudhisthira raised one eyebrow at her. "Are you still angry at him?"

"No. That is why I wish to _see _him."

"I don't know. He's been around." Yudhisthira suspected that Arjuna was off pouting somewhere. He had not taken the news that Mr. Drona would not be accompanying him to Khandava well. Yudhisthira did not understand any of the reasoning behind this decision. But then again, there was much about the Panchalans that Yudhisthira did not understand.

"If you see him," Draupadi said, her dark eyes almost pleading, "tell him that I'm waiting for him. Please."

"Of course," Yudhisthira said. _Uh-oh, _Yudhisthira thought.

He left Draupadi alone on the balcony. The next person Yudhisthira ran into, unfortunately, was Duryodhana.

"Don't say I never do anything for you," Duryodhana said, tossing him a datadisc that Yudhisthira barely managed to catch. "That's all of the dirt that Sanjaya could dig up on that Bhushana fellow. He looks clean. Might make a decent minister for you."

"Thank you," Yudhisthira said, pocketing the disc. "Have you seen my mother around?"

"Probably with my mother," Duryodhana said with a frown. He paused for a moment, impatiently waving his bodyguards away. Once they were gone, he drew himself closer to Yudhisthira and whispered, "You know, my mother hasn't spoken to my father since the announcement. I don't understand what she's so _upset _about."

Yudhisthira drew in his breath sharply. "That's terrible," he breathed. "Will they... Will they be all right?"

"Yes, yes," Duryodhana said, waving his hand dismissively. "They'll get over it. I've only seen them like this once before, and if I recall correctly, the end result of _that _was Yuyutsu." Duryodhana laughed, even though Yudhisthira did not think this very funny. "I'm pretty sure they'll patch things up soon. I wouldn't be surprised if I got another sibling out of this, though. And one more thing," Duryodhana added. "I want to let Ashwatthama divine our fortune at our coronation. The kid deserves it. Dhaumya probably won't mind, but I thought it might be better for you to ask him instead of me."

Yudhisthira made a small sound in the back of his throat.

"What?" Duryodhana asked, puzzled by the sudden look of terror on Yudhisthira's face.

"I almost forgot," Yudhisthira moaned. "The _coronation_. Our _promise._"

"What promise?" Duryodhana asked.

"To the yakshas." Yudhisthira buried his face in his hands. "One of_ them_ will be the one to tell our futures, remember?"

* * *

XI.

The week before the coronation passed all too quickly. Yudhisthira felt as though he barely had enough time to get his affairs in order before, all of a sudden, he was standing in the same room and being fitted for the same robes and hat by the same servants who had attended to him exactly a week ago. This time, however, Yudhisthira was relieved to be in the dressing room. He had just endured nearly twenty-four hours of fasting and purification, including having his naked body smeared with mud from sacred spots all over Kuru. Fortunately, he had also been forced to bathe in freezing-cold purified water before putting on his royal robes.

"Nobody can look good in an outfit like this," Duryodhana complained, eyeing himself in a mirror as a servant finished pinning his not-quite-hat to his hair. The mud had somehow managed to make his skin look even better than it had before. Yudhisthira envied him this.

Yudhisthira had to hold his own head steady as a wave of déjà swept over him. "Bow during the hymns," he mumbled to himself, even though Duryodhana and he had rehearsed the coronation ceremony what felt like a hundred times already. "Ignore the cameras. Remove your headpiece. Don't flinch if the water they pour on you is cold."

"Hold your breath and bite your lip right before they pour it," Duryodhana advised. "Then you won't flinch."

Yudhisthira wasn't listening, at that point. He was praying.

Duryodhana reached out and grasped Yudhisthira's hand. "This is it," he said.

Yudhisthira took a deep breath. Somewhere far in front of him, through a long hallway and through many doors, a crowd - and his crown - was waiting for him.

"It's time," an aide with a comm wrapped around his ear suddenly said. "They're cueing you, Your Majesties. And...." The aide paused for a moment, then reported: "There is still no sign of the yaksha which you told us to expect."

"Maybe it forgot," Duryodhana said. "Maybe it's not coming."

"It will come," Yudhisthira said, as he and Duryodhana stepped forward, hand in hand. "It will."

* * *

XII.

As far as Arjuna was concerned, the entire ceremony was a great boring waste of time, at least so far. Ashwatthama sang a hymn and led a prayer, and some ministers that Arjuna didn't care about gave speeches. Ashwatthama led another prayer. Then he took his seat beside Arjuna again, while someone else gave another boring speech.

"I never knew you could sing," Arjuna whispered, leaning over toward Ashwatthama.

Ashwatthama chuckled quietly. "I have many hidden talents."

Arjuna glanced across the hall, to where Drona, Kripa, and Kripi were seated opposite him and his brothers. Drona caught Arjuna's eye and mouthed _boring_, then rolled his eyes dramatically. Arjuna had to stifle a laugh, then suddenly clenched his hands in his lap as a wave of sorrow passed over him, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. He still couldn't believe that Mr. Drona wasn't going to stay with him and be his teacher anymore. He still couldn't believe that nobody was willing to tell him the reason that Mr. Drona was staying in Hastinapura, no matter how persistently Arjuna had asked.

Arjuna suddenly reached out and grasped Ashwatthama's hand. "I'm going to miss you," he whispered fiercely.

"Save the goodbyes for later--"

"Just saying."

"I know." Ashwatthama's eyes scanned the crowd sitting across from them, his eyes resting briefly on Drupada, his mouth twisting into a tiny frown that was gone almost as soon as it had begun to appear. "Arjuna..."

"What?"

"Lately I haven't been able to hear the Lord Shiva's voice. At all." Ashwatthama closed his eyes. "No matter what I do. No matter how much I pray." He opened his eyes. "It's because I broke my vows. I swore never to hate, and yet there is someone that I hate. I swore never to envy, and yet there is someone that I envy. I swore never to fear, and yet there is someone that I have begun to fear. I swore never to loathe, and yet there are times when I loathe myself."

Arjuna slowly let go of Ashwatthama's hand. "Um," he said.

Ashwatthama shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I... That was inappropriate of me. Forgive me."

Arjuna said nothing. He remembered all of the times that he had blurted out all of his problems to Ashwatthama, all of his secret fears and hurts and longings, and Ashwatthama had known exactly the right words to say, exactly the right thing to do to make him feel better. Arjuna had not really stopped to think that Ashwatthama might ever feel things like fear before. And now Arjuna did not know what to say in the face of it.

"I--" Arjuna began, when suddenly something large and heavy began crushing his foot.

Arjuna bit down on his lip to stifle a yell of pain. "The cameras are watching us," Bhima hissed, withdrawing his enormous foot off of Arjuna's. "_Be quiet. Eyes straight ahead_."

Arjuna folded his hands in his lap and pretended to be interested in the speech going on in front of him. But his eyes kept wandering across the hall, to where Drupada and his three children were sitting. Arjuna's eyes rested on Draupadi, and he watched her as she delicately stifled a yawn with her slender, dark hand. Arjuna wondered if he and Draupadi were kindred spirits after all.

* * *

XIII.

Walking down the length of the Great Hall with his hand in Duryodhana's, surrounded by silence punctuated by the discrete clicks of cameras and the electronic whirring of broadcast equipment, felt almost surreal to Yudhisthira. He stood and endured the coronation ceremony as if he were experiencing it in a dream. It certainly felt like a dream. Or rather, it did until the moment when he had to kneel and have freezing cold water poured all over his head.

Yudhisthira hoped that his long, wet bangs had concealed the flinch on his face from the watching cameras.

Yudhisthira lifted as his head as Bhisma smoothed back his wet hair and placed his great-grandfather's crown on his head. Yudhisthira stood up slowly, and tried not to look sideways at Duryodhana. He wondered how Duryodhana looked wearing his father's crown on top of _his _wet hair. Dashing, no doubt.

Ashwatthama poured clarified butter into the sacred fire burning at the end of the hall and chanted, "O Supreme Lord, who art light and wisdom, Thou knowest all our thoughts and deeds. Lead us by the right path to the fulfillment of life, and keep us away from all sin and evil. We offer unto Thee, O Lord, our praise and salutation."

Then Ashwatthama paused, and Bhisma stepped back. Ashwatthama looked expectantly over Yudhisthira's shoulder, at the back of the Hall. He looked to the left, then to the right. Then he sighed, waited a moment longer, and finally said, "It is now time for the Lord to show us the path our kings' futures." Another long pause, and then, "I will be the one to--"

"_Just one moment, young man_." The yaksha tapped Ashwatthama's shoulder in a polite way. The look on Ashwatthama's face, Yudhisthira thought, would have been comical in any other circumstance. Bhisma took another step back, startled, wearing an expression almost identical to Ashwatthama's. A rumble spread through the crowd in the Hall. The yaksha simply had not been standing behind Ashwatthama a minute ago. And now, in front of all of the cameras and all of the eyes on Kuru, there he was.

This time the yaksha did not even make an attempt to appear human. He was naked and round and plump, his proportions strange and alien, his face curiously bland and unremarkable, save for the sharp teeth peeking out from beneath his fleshy upper lip. His long arms hung down nearly to his squat ankles. A reddish-gold beard hung from his face. His arms and legs and torso were covered in gold chains and precious jewels, but not much else. Yudhisthira thought that perhaps this yaksha had worn his version of his most formal dress for the coronation ceremony. But still, there was a conspicuously bare area leftover for the broadcast cameras to pixelate.

The yaksha bowed down in front of Yudhisthira, grasped Yudhisthira's hand, and kissed the soft spot between his thumb and forefinger. He did the same for Duryodhana, who looked repulsed. Yudhisthira swallowed nervously. Where the yaksha's lips had brushed his skin, he felt a burning, tingling sensation beginning to spread up his entire arm.

The yaksha stood up again, beaming at Yudhisthira. "Your Majesties," he said. "Forgive my rudeness, but I did not wish to intrude upon your human ceremony until it was my turn." He turned his head briefly toward Ashwatthama, who still looked as if he were in the throes of a mild heart attack. "My apologies," he said, with a slight bow of his head.

Ashwatthama held up his trembling hand in a shaking gesture of blessing.

The yaksha turned toward Yudhisthira again, still beaming. Yudhisthira was taken aback. This yaksha seemed much warmer and kinder than the cold, threatening one who had saved him and Duryodhana on that stormy morning so many years ago. But it was the same one, nevertheless. He had the same voice. Yudhisthira would never forget that voice.

"Your kings agreed to bestow upon me the honor of divining their futures," the yaksha said, addressing the general assembly. "In preparation for this day, I have spent many years, traveling many worlds - to the heavens, to the hells - asking the assistance of my master Lord Kuvera, many devas, and many asuras. I have been shown the shadowed paths of the futures of these two many times. There is very little uncertainty in what I am to say to them; there is only one shared destiny woven into the lives of these two."

The yaksha reached out and grasped Yudhisthira's hand. "You, Dharmaraj. You will take the weight of the world upon your shoulders, and know only suffering for it." With his other hand, the yaksha reached for Duryodhana, grasping his trembling hand. "You, Adharma made flesh. This world and all worlds will bow before your feet, and you will know only suffering for it." He turned his head toward Yudhisthira. "You were born of Dharma, who is justice, but also death. You will bring death to this world." He turned his head toward Duryodhana. "You were born to be more than a mere human. Should you fulfill your destiny, you will also bring death to this world." The yaksha brought Yudhisthira and Duryodhana's hands together. "You will both destroy everything and everyone that you love. In doing so, you will fulfill the will of the Gods."

Yudhisthira felt bile rising in his throat. The touch of the yaksha was repulsive to him. He wanted to pull away his hand, to scream, to run away, to do _something_, anything. But he was rooted in place, passive, immobile, paralyzed by the watching cameras and the millions of eyes he could feel staring at him.

Duryodhana, however, apparently felt no such fears. He shook his hand angrily free of the yaksha's grasp and snarled, "What manner of devilry is this?!"

"I am no devil." The yaksha mercifully dropped Yudhisthira's hand, then folded his own hands in front of his bare, protruding belly. "I have prepared for many years to bestow upon you your fortune, Your Majesty. Please do not mock me."

"I'll not mock, but I'll not trust the words of a cunning monster, either," Duryodhana said, loudly.

Yudhisthira felt his heart thumping in his chest. _Stupid, stupid! Don't provoke it!_ He glanced around the Hall frantically, saw Grandpa Bhisma whispering something into the micro-comm that he had discretely clipped to the collar of his robes, and saw the bodyguards beginning to close in around the head of the Hall.

Yudhisthira turned back toward the yaksha, who met his eyes, once, briefly. "Be not afraid," the yaksha said. Words not for Duryodhana or for Bhisma or for anybody else there or watching, but for Yudhisthira alone. Then the yaksha vanished. No puff of smoke, no eerie supernatural sound effects, nothing. He simply was no more.

Yudhisthira felt his knees shaking. "Be not afraid," he mumbled to himself. The yaksha had meant it not as advice or reassurance, but as a command. Yudhisthira wondered if he would be able to fulfill such an impossible task.

* * *

XIV.

There was no time for a feast or a celebration afterwards. Immediately following the coronation, the expedition to Hastinapura was scheduled to leave. It would have been inauspicious, Dhaumya had explained, for Yudhisthira to celebrate his coronation in a city that he was not meant to rule.

Yudhisthira followed the porters carrying the last of his provisions up the wide plank connecting the massive _Matsya's Blessing _to the cement dock stretched far out over the ocean, away from the dangerous rocks and treacherous waves closer to the shore. He tried not to pay attention to the porters and servants and bodyguards that surrounded him like a cloud.

"A real yaksha? That was a _real _yaksha?!"

"I didn't think they _could _step inside a human-made building--"

"It was covered in gold, you should have seen it--"

"I saw it on the console--"

"It was amazing--"

"Yes, but did you listen to what it said?!"

Duryodhana was waiting halfway up the plank, along with his family, to see Yudhisthira off. Even though the loading plank was wide enough to support the Rough-Terrain Vehicles that had been loaded on the ship ten minutes ago, it was still barely wide enough to support Duryodhana, his parents, and his one hundred siblings. Yudhisthira embraced his uncle Dhritarashtra, and let Gandhari kiss him on his forehead. "Tell your mother that I'll be terribly bored without her around," Gandhari said.

"I'll tell her that."

"Build a great city," Dhritarashtra said, touching Yudhisthira's hair. "A splendid city to make your father proud."

"I will."

Yudhisthira pulled away from Dhritarashtra, and turned toward Duryodhana. Duryodhana made as if to shake his hand, then seemed to pause, reconsider, and finally threw his arms around Yudhisthira. "I'll miss you," he said simply.

"Then come to visit me."

"Once you build a decent palace, and there's electricity, plumbing, climate control in that wretched place, _then_ I will."

Yudhisthira laughed, and kissed Duryodhana's cheeks. Then he grew serious for a moment. "I owe you too much," he said.

Duryodhana shook his head. "No, you don't. For what?"

"For everything. For helping me so much in the beginning. For being my friend."

"I won't accept payment for being your friend," Duryodhana said. He pushed Yudhisthira away, gently. "You should go. And for the Gods' sake, Yudhisthira, save those tears for the cameras up there."

"I'll try," Yudhisthira said, wiping his eyes as discreetly as he could. He bowed to Duryodhana's other brothers, who bowed in unison in return. Then Yudhisthira turned and continued up the plank.

The deck of the ship was in chaos. Servants and porters ran everywhere, fastening down equipment, travel vehicles, construction machines, loading provisions, and trying to shoo off the many people who had come aboard just to say farewell.

Yudhisthira shaded his eyes against the bright afternoon glare of the sun reflecting off the ocean around him. He saw three of his four brothers leaning over the back of an RTV that had been fastened to the deck. They were intently watching something. Yudhisthira squeezed in beside Bhima and asked, "Where's Arjuna?"

"Shhhh!" Nakula hushed his brother impatiently. He adjusted something fastened to his ear. "I still can't hear them."

"They've been hugging for minutes," Bhima said, by way of explanation. "If I didn't know better, I'd say the damn priest was molesting him."

Yudhisthira followed Bhima's line of vision and saw Arjuna, standing on a lower level of the deck, crying and hugging Drona. Drona finally pushed him away and said something - there was no way that Yudhisthira could hear him - and Arjuna shook his head tearfully. Ashwatthama came running up to them, panting and out of breath. Arjuna began crying and hugging him, too. But Ashwatthama pushed Arjuna away and shoved something into his arms. It was a book bound in fine cloth, the cover riddled with Panchalan writing that Yudhisthira had to squint to make out.

"What's he saying?" Sahadeva asked Nakula. "What did he just give him?"

"I still can't hear," Nakula hissed. He adjusted whatever device he had stuck in the well of his ear with his fingernail again.

Yudhisthira began scanning the area around the lower deck. He spotted the seagull that was obviously not a seagull almost instantly. It was perched on a railing not too far from Drona. "Nakula," he sighed.

"What? I'm just testing it. I thought it might come in handy for you later."

"I appreciate that. I suppose."

"What are you looking at?" Draupadi suddenly asked.

All four brothers turned around instantly. Draupadi was standing behind them, watching them curiously from behind the dark shades that were protecting her eyes from the sun. She lifted the shades off her face, pulling them up and resting them in her hair. "And with such guilty expressions on your faces, too."

"Something of no importance," Nakula said, stepping forward to bow and kiss her hand. She laughed. "How much longer are you staying in Hastinapura, Your Highness?"

"I would stay longer if I were able to keep _you _around," Draupadi said, coyly. Then she turned toward Yudhisthira. "I know that you have much to deal with, Your Majesty, building a new capitol and all, but... You will all be coming to my brother's wedding, won't you?"

Yudhisthira stared at her. She was wearing a sundress and a silk wrap around her shoulders, her long dark hair blowing freely in the ocean breeze. He swallowed and tried to remind himself that the woman standing in front of him - barely more than a girl, really - was the woman who had, just a short time ago, led a hostile alien force into a full-scale invasion of Kuru. "I wouldn't miss Sikhandhi's wedding for all the worlds," Yudhisthira said with a grin.

Draupadi glanced around the deck, blinking in the bright sunlight. "Where is Arjuna?"

"Right here," Arjuna said, a bit morosely. He stepped toward them, his gift from Ashwatthama still clutched to his chest. He nodded at Draupadi. "Hey."

She snapped her shades back down over her eyes. "Well," she huffed. "At least I got a kiss on the hand from your brother." She turned and walked away.

Arjuna watched her leave, blinking at her receding back. "What was that about?" he asked, baffled.

"Nothing," Yudhisthira said quickly. "What've you got there?"

"It's from Mr. Drona," Arjuna said, sadly, holding out the book. "It's homework."

Nakula and Sahadeva laughed in unison. "Homework?!" Nakula snorted.

"Since I'm not officially done being his student yet," Arjuna said, embarrassed. "It's mantras and meditation homework and a log for me to record my shooting practice. And... some stuff about the spacefleet.... I didn't really get that part, I'll have to call him later..."

"Fleet specs?" Bhima asked, suddenly interested. "I didn't know he had a military background."

"I don't know why he wants _me _to have a military background," Arjuna added.

"Quite the military background, actually," Bhisma said, appearing out of almost nowhere to rest his hands on Arjuna's shoulders. "I remember back in the day, your Mr. Drona was the chief commander of the largest division of Drupada's fleet."

Arjuna looked up at his grandfather, startled. "He never told me that."

"Likely because he quit that job a long, long time ago. Regardless," Bhisma said, lifting his head to look Bhima squarely in the eye, "if your brother's been assigned to learn more about our military capabilities, you'll help him, won't you?"

Bhima nodded.

Bhisma patted Arjuna on the shoulder. "Heaven forbid that either of you should ever have to use such knowledge." He stepped around Arjuna and embraced Yudhisthira. "I don't care if you're on the other side of the planet, you had better not use that as an excuse to never call your grandfather on the comm."

"I won't."

"And I assigned that pesky reporter crew to the lowest level of cabins, and there are no less than twelve guards stationed all around their quarters, so there's no way any of those fools can try to come up here and broadcast video of you crying," Bhisma said, flicking a tear away from Yudhisthira's cheek, "like you are now."

"I'll miss you, Grandpa Bhisma."

"You're a king, now. You don't need me breathing down your neck anymore." Bhisma pulled away from Yudhisthira, and bowed to all of his brothers. "Take care of your mother," he said. And then he left.

Yudhisthira sighed and then looked around. Sahadeva had already wandered off, as he was prone to do. But Nakula was now sitting on the hood of the RTV behind them, prying open the back of his seagull with a screwstick.

Yudhisthira sat down beside him. "It still needs some work?" he asked.

"Apparently." Nakula removed one screw, pocketed it, and started on another. "Memo to you: that Draupadi likes having her hand kissed."

Yudhisthira started. "Why...?"

"Because you're going to marry her, I think," Nakula said. He tapped the listening device in his ear. "Drupada's been walking around all day talking about a marriage alliance with Kuru. That means _you_. It has to be either you or Duryodhana. And honestly, Duryodhana isn't the one that he keeps staring at."

Yudhisthira looked up quickly, and saw Arjuna still standing a few steps away from them, holding his book, pretending that he wasn't listening. His face was dark.

"How long are we going to be on this ship?" Nakula suddenly asked.

"Two weeks, before we reach Khandava."

"Ugh." Nakula pocketed another screw. "I hate the ocean. Too many damn fish." He paused for a moment, then his face suddenly lit up. "But if this ship were equipped with a defensive laser cannon--"

"It already is," Yudhisthira said, quickly.

"Unfortunately," Nakula sighed. The he looked up at Yudhisthira and said, "By the way, yaksha are known for lying to humans. You do know that, right?"

"...Right."

"Personally, I wouldn't believe a word that it said." Nakula pocketed yet another screw. "I don't think you have it in you to destroy a world. You don't have the spine _or _the balls for it." He looked up at Yudhisthira. "And that part about you destroying everyone that you love? Yeah, right. I'd like to see you try." He frowned at Yudhisthira thoughtfully. "I could take you. If I had a decent weapon. Or a doomsday device."

"Thank you," Yudhisthira said, resisting the urge to hug Nakula. Nakula would have balked, and then the moment would have been ruined.

"No problem," Nakula said.

* * *

XV.

For Yudhisthira, the two weeks he spent aboard the _Matsya's Blessing _were far from relaxing. There was still far too much to plan and organize before the arrival at Khandava, the broadcast reporters who had gotten clearance to come along wanted to interview him at every opportunity, and he watched the console reports from Hastinapura almost obsessively. Not much of note happened, save for the departure of Drupada and his family, who returned to Panchala a few days after the coronation.

On the dawn of their fourteenth day at sea, Khandava was spotted on the horizon.

"Ugh," Nakula said, leaning out over a railing and staring at the bare, rocky dot on the horizon. A few fisher's dwellings huddled on top of a windswept cliff, and that seemed to be the extent of human civilization on the island.

"It's not so bad," Yudhisthira said, forcing himself to sound upbeat. "The opposite side of the island is supposed to be very fertile, covered with dairy farms."

"I hate cows," Nakula apparently felt obligated to comment.

* * *

XVI.

The citizens of the fishing village that Yudhisthira had spotted from the ship came down to greet the _Matysa's Blessing _in groups of two and three, chanting prayers and throwing flowers at their king. Yudhisthira made it a point to smile and wave, while he left the loading of the RTVs to Bhima.

"You will stay for at least a night, won't you, Your Majesty?" a village elder asked, bowing before Yudhisthira.

"We'll come back, later," Yudhisthira said. "But for now, we've been advised to move inland as quickly as possible. We must find a site and begin building the new capitol before we can even think of taking a respite."

The old man looked up sharply. "Your Majesty--!"

Yudhisthira laughed. "I appreciate the offer, but I suspect that you would have been less than overjoyed if I had told you that I was building the new capitol on top of your village."

The elder straightened up slowly. "You are very kind, Your Majesty."

Yudhisthira took the old man's hands in his. "I will not disturb the peace of this place," he promised. "We will build far inland, away from those who have already settled here."

"Head north, then," the elder said, as village woman came forward and began piling offerings of gold and jewels in front of Yudhisthira. "The land is clear, and there are few farms. There is an old forest there."

Yudhisthira winced inwardly. The environmentalists would have his head if they found out that he cleared out an old-growth forest in order to build new government offices. "Thank you," he said, as an aide helped him onto the back of an RTV. "We will come back. I promise."

Yudhisthira frowned to himself as the RTV rumbled to life beneath him. So far, so good, although he knew that he had not won the hearts of his new subjects in Khandava quite yet. Khandava was far from Hastinapura, and for centuries had existed almost completely independent of Hastinapura's nominal rule. The people of Khandava were used to their independence, too – and had nothing but disdain for Hastinapura's traditions regarding the roles of men and women, the ironclad law that children followed in the footsteps of their parents, and the rules of right and wrong. Yudhisthira still wasn't sure how much he was able or willing to compromise with Indrapastha's people. But he at least knew that he didn't want to earn their spite, or their hatred, by forcing them under his thumb.

Yudhisthira tapped his chin and pondered. This was going to be difficult.

* * *

XVII.

There were only four hours of daylight left by the time that the RTV convoy began rolling over the rocky terrain, heading north up the coast of the island. Yudhisthira rode in an RTV with his mother. He, unfortunately, was still wearing his formal robes, which were appropriate for greeting his subjects for the first time, but hardly appropriate for a cold, muddy journey into the scrubland on Khandava. Yudhisthira turned to his mother. "I haven't seen you dress like that since I was twelve years old," he said.

She laughed, and brushed a strand of her graying hair from her face. Yudhisthira's mother was already wearing the camping jacket, coveralls, and boots that he remembered from his childhood in the forest. "We _are _camping tonight," she said. "And I've hardly had a chance to leave the city since we moved back to Hastinapura."

Just as the sun was setting on the horizon, the convoy stopped on a ridge overlooking a vast expanse of scrubland, scrubland, and even more scrubland. In the distance, Yudhisthira could just make out the forest that the village elder had mentioned.

"Why are we stopping?" Nakula asked, loudly, climbing down from the RTV he had shared with Sahadeva. "Are we breaking ground here?"

"No, we're setting up camp here," Bhima said.

Nakula grumbled something under his breath.

Servants scrambled around, setting up tents, cooking equipment, sanitary facilities, and unloading food and clothing. Dhaumya built a sacred fire and began to prepare a sacrifice. Yudhisthira vanished into his tent at the first opportunity he had, gratefully stripped off his robes, and changed into something rougher and warmer. He quickly pulled his long hair back and stepped back out into the campsite, which was being strung with electric lights. A half dozen generators hummed in the dark beyond the tents.

Nakula came stalking up to Yudhisthira immediately. "Where am I sleeping?" he demanded.

Yudhisthira took his hand and pulled him into the tent he had just emerged from. "In here," he said.

"In a tent?!"

Yudhisthira looked around the tent. Servants were busy inflating beds and layering them with fine sheets and thick, warm blankets. A heater hummed in one corner, and various parts of the tent were partitioned off with curtains for privacy. A water pump and sink had been installed in the center. "Just like home," he said.

"No it isn't! This is terrible! I can't believe I'm sleeping in a goddamn _tent_! I should be sleeping in a palace, not camping like a homeless person in a goddamn _tent_!"

"This hardly counts as camping," Yudhisthira said, dryly.

"What if I have to go to the bathroom?!"

"They've set up a privy--"

"No!" Nakula held up his hands. "I don't want to see it! Ugh!" He turned and began stalking away. "I'll just _hold it _until we have some decent plumbing around here. If I die of kidney failure, it'll be your fault!"

Bhima stepped into the tent just as Nakula was leaving. "Why didn't we ever take him camping when he was younger?" Bhima asked.

"Because he would have hated it."

"So, again, _why didn't _we?"

"You're a terrible brother," Yudhisthira said. He stepped outside the tent, rummaged around his pockets for a smokeroll, found one, lit it, and inhaled deeply. He watched his servants set a table, preparing it for the four-course feast that other servants were busy preparing inside the cooking tent. "Where's Sahadeva?"

"Around. You know how he comes and goes," Bhima said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he were busy disassembling some vital piece of equipment right now." He looked up at the clear, starry sky overhead. Kuru's moon floated low above the horizon, the lights of Anga clearly visible on its surface facing the planet. "Reminds me of long ago," he said wistfully.

Yudhisthira looked up at the sky. "It reminds me of Father," he said.

"He would have enjoyed this."

"Even with Nakula complaining every moment, he would have enjoyed this." Yudhisthira looked down again. "Speak of the devil," he muttered.

Nakula was approaching them again, this time with a small bag slung over his shoulder. Sahadeva followed a step behind him. "We have to start on our hair," he said. "It takes an hour to wash it right, and I don't know what kind of primitive facilities you have set up here, but--"

"Can't that wait until after dinner?" Yudhisthira asked, almost rhetorically.

"Is there a place where I can plug this in?" Nakula asked, pulling a straightening iron out of his bag. "The cold weather makes my hair curl. Literally."

"Nakula, is that really so important?"

"Unless you want your little brother to look unpresentable, then _yes_."

"We have to limit our electricity usage," Bhima explained, patiently. "No frivolous plugins. If you want to try, you can ask for permission from Mother. But if you plug that thing in and it ends up shorting out a generator, you'll be sorry."

"That's stupid. It's not my fault if your electrical generators are wired poorly," Nakula fumed.

Sahadeva placed one hand on Nakula's shoulder and said softly, "Uncle Shalya warned us that this would happen."

Nakula muttered something under his breath. "Just saying," Sahadeva said, and removed his hand slowly.

Yudhisthira said nothing, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply of his smokeroll. When he opened his eyes, Nakula was gone, thankfully. However, Arjuna was there. Arjuna looked at him for a moment, then bowed low. _Now what?, _Yudhisthira thought.

"If I may have your permission," Arjuna said, "I would like to leave the camp for the night."

Yudhisthira inhaled his smokeroll again. "Why?" Bhima asked.

"Because I wish to meditate. And pray." Arjuna stood up. "There are... Some things I need to think about."

"I thought that the point of meditating was _not_ thinking."

Arjuna said nothing.

Yudhisthira blew out a smoke ring. "You'll be okay out there alone?"

"You know I will be. I'm not like Nakula."

Yudhisthira laughed. Well, what was the harm? Arjuna had done pilgrimages into the wilderness before, and he seemed to know what he was doing. "You won't at least stay for dinner?"

"I'd rather not. I can take some food with me."

"Will you at least be back by eight hundred hours tomorrow morning? To help us pack up?"

"I will be."

"Then go."

Arjuna turned, and left. Yudhisthira watched him go. "I don't understand why he..." Yudhisthira trailed off. _Wastes time trying to speak with the Gods, _he was about to say, but then decided that it was wisest to close his mouth. "Why he can't just pray here," Yudhisthira finished.

"Because sharing a tent with Nakula is not the most conducive environment to mystical experiences," Bhima said. "Especially when Nakula's busy spending four hours doing his hair and complaining loudly about it."

* * *

XVIII.

Arjuna climbed down another ridge of scrubland. It was dark out here, very dark. The lights of his family's campsite had already receded into the distance. But there was moonlight, and starlight, to guide him. Arjuna squinted his sharp eyes, his vision piercing clearly through the darkness. Years ago, he would have been blind as a bat in this environment - or in any environment, for that matter. But things had changed since then. _He_ had changed.

Arjuna had brought a small bag of food with him, and a thick blanket rolled up and strapped to his back. It was cold out here, and it would only get colder as the night wore on. But Mr. Drona had taught Arjuna to resist the influences of the environment around him. Especially when he was meditating: he could not allow himself to be distracted by discomfort.

After about an hour, Arjuna found himself on the edge of the vast forest that he had seen in the distance. He moved among the trees quietly, mindful of the nocturnal rodents and birds rustling around him. He found a soft pile of dead leaves beneath a tree, unrolled his blanket, and sat down on top of it. He breathed in the cold air, feeling the stillness of the forest filling him. He crossed his legs, rested his hands, and then tried very, very hard not to think.

Arjuna wasn't sure of how much time had passed, but when he was rudely snapped to his senses sometime later, the stars were in a completely different position in the sky.

Arjuna only noted this because, for some reason, he was suddenly flat on his back, and staring up at the sky. And there was someone lying sprawled on top of him. Because, apparently, said someone had tripped and fallen right on top of Arjuna.

"Sorry, sorry," the someone said, crawling off of Arjuna gingerly. The stranger dusted himself off quickly, and shined his flashstick right into Arjuna's face. "Nothing broken, I hope?"

Arjuna sat up quickly, blinking and shielding his eyes from the beam of the stranger's flashstick. "I'm fine," he said.

"Listen," the stranger said. "Have you seen--?" He cut himself off as the beam of his flashstick flashed across Arjuna's face again. "Oh my gosh. You're a _prince!_"

Arjuna straightened up his back. Finally, this idiot seemed to have noticed. Arjuna waited patiently for the stranger to bow down and touch his feet, beg for forgiveness, or at least stop flashing that cursed flashstick in his eyes. But the stranger did none of these things. Instead, he dropped his flashstick for a moment - Arjuna still couldn't see his face - and unshouldered the pack on his back, digging around until he found another flashstick, which he promptly tossed into Arjuna's hands. "Great!" he said. "You can help me look."

"Wait." Arjuna stood up and blinked, clutching the flashstick. "What?"

"We have to find Spider tonight. My mom'll kill me if I don't. It's my fault that he escaped the pen in the first place." The stranger cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, "_Hey, Spider!_" But there was no answer from the silent forest.

Arjuna looked at him for a long time. "You lost your dog?" he asked.

The stranger turned his head toward Arjuna, still a vague shadow to Arjuna's light-blinded eyes. "Spider isn't a dog," he said. "Spider is a _cow_. A six-week old calf, to be specific." The stranger began stepping lightly away from Arjuna. "This way," he said.

"That's toward my family's camp," Arjuna said, gathering up his bag and blanket and following the stranger without having any idea why. He switched on his flashstick and unselfconsciously examined the stranger beside him in its bright beam. The stranger had dark skin and thick, dark hair. His unruly bangs flopped down over his eyes, which he brushed aside as he winced under the glare of Arjuna's flashstick. "You're Arjuna, aren't you?" the surprisingly handsome stranger asked.

" 'Your Highness.' "

The stranger laughed. "I'm not a prince."

"No, I mean... You should address me as 'Your Highness.' "

The stranger ignored this. "I'm Krishna," he said. "My family has a farm on the other side of this forest," he explained, waving his flashstick in the vague direction behind them. "It's my fault that Spider got out of the pen. You wouldn't think that a six-week-old would be able to run as fast as that thing could, but..." Krishna shrugged.

" 'Spider'?" Arjuna asked, curiously.

Krishna laughed again. "Because the poor thing has four vestigial legs growing out of its back. Two on each side."

"That's... disgusting."

"It's normal. That's what you get for raising cows on growth hormones." Krishna sighed. "We're going to cut the stupid things off when Spider gets old enough. _Hey, Spider! Spider, where are you?_"

"_Spider_!" Arjuna called out, cupping his hands. He had to struggle not to laugh at himself. Why in the five hells was he following this crazy dairy farmer who had tripped all over him in the middle of the night? And a _rude _crazy dairy farmer, to boot. Arjuna tried to rationalize: this Krishna was one of his subjects, after all, and as a prince it was his duty to serve his subjects in need--

"What were you doing out here all alone?" Krishna suddenly asked, apparently oblivious to the concept of not being nosy.

"Seeking enlightenment," Arjuna answered, dryly.

"You and about two billion others."

Arjuna couldn't decide whether this comment was offensive or not. He looked sideways at Krishna. He seemed to be about Arjuna's age, and he badly needed a haircut, but he didn't seem to care. The elbows on his jacket were patched and his boots were worn. Krishna suddenly cupped his hands and called out again, "_Hey, Spider!_"

This time, there was an answer - a faint, mewling cry from deep within the forest.

"This way!" Krishna said, suddenly bolting through the trees. Arjuna followed him as quickly as he dared, trying not to trip over the roots and undergrowth that got in his way. "_Spider! Spider!_" Krishna shouted, mindless of the nocturnal animals that he disturbed with his yelling.

Krishna ground to a halt so quickly that Arjuna nearly slammed right into him. "Spider!" he cried out, falling to his knees and embracing the small, gangly creature that had come limping up to meet him.

_Ugh_, Arjuna thought, as his flashstick beam gave him his first glimpse of Spider. The calf would have been adorable, if not for the shriveled, withered four legs growing out of its spine, lying limp and useless against its flanks.

"Who's a good baby? Who's my good little baby?" Krishna cooed, scratching the calf's chin. "Why did you come running all the way out here, you silly thing?"

The calf mewled in response, and Krishna suddenly let go of it and stood up quickly. "_Really?!_"

Arjuna stared at Krishna, fascinated. He had never actually met anyone crazy enough to think that they could talk to animals before. "What'd he say?" Arjuna asked, deciding to humor the insane farmer boy.

"He said that he was supposed to lead us out here. That there's someone who wants to talk to us." Krishna patted Spider's head briefly. "You'll lead us to him, won't you?"

Spider turned and began walking in his awkward, gangly walk, deeper into the forest. Krishna followed him for a few steps, then turned, and trained the beam of his flashstick on Arjuna, who was still standing rooted to the spot. "Aren't you coming?" he asked.

"You're insane," Arjuna said.

Krishna squinted at him. "You came out here looking for the gods, didn't you?"

Arjuna's flashstick trembled in his hand.

"Well," Krishna said, "There's a god waiting for us right over there. He wants to talk to you."

"Did Spider tell you that?"

"Yes." Krishna turned back toward Spider, who had paused with his front hooves resting on an elevated tree root. The calf turned its head and glared at Arjuna, while making a sound that might have been an impatient grunt.

"Fine," Arjuna said, reluctantly stepping forward to follow Krishna. _If the gods want to communicate with me through unhinged dairy farmers and deformed animals, then that's just fine._

Arjuna followed Krishna and the hideous little calf silently through the forest, listening to the sound of leaves and twigs snapping and crackling beneath their feet. Finally, Spider stopped and lay down awkwardly in front of a towering, ancient tree that vanished into the blackness overhead. Sitting at the base of the tree, legs bent and arms resting limply in his lap, was a man. At least, it appeared to be a man, until Arjuna stepped closer and the beam of his flashstick revealed the man's red skin – as well as the fact that the man had two faces.

"Ah, Krishna," the man said, as Krishna knelt down respectfully in front of him, keeping his eyes downcast. The man's voice sounded weak and trembly. Looking at his two faces, which seemed to exist and also to not exist in the same space, made Arjuna's head ache. Arjuna quickly imitated Krishna, dropping to his knees and bowing respectfully, casting down his eyes. He had already seen the man's sweaty, trembling arms and limp, greasy dark hair. Arjuna knew that this man was not well.

"And you must be Arjuna," the man said. "You are Indra's son."

Arjuna began to tremble. The devakin markings on his back and neck seemed as if they were on fire. _This is real, _he thought, his heard pounding in his chest. _This is real. This man is a deva. This man is a GOD. I'm talking to a god!_ Arjuna felt time slowing down around him, felt his breath coming in shallow gasps. _This is a dream. This is a dream. This is_--

"This is no dream, young man." The god sounded ill, but amused nevertheless. "You've never spoken with a deva before, have you?"

"Only once, sir." Arjuna winced as soon as he had said it. _Sir! You can't address a god as _sir, _it should be "my Lord" or something--_

"How unfortunate," the god said. "Your father shouldn't have ignored you for so long."

Arjuna looked up sharply. Had the god just made a joke?

The god laughed weakly. "Do I surprise you, Arjuna?"

"A bit, my Lord."

"I am quite ill," the god said, closing his eyes for a moment, his faces drawn. "Forgive my appearance. It is hard to maintain a human form in my present condition." He sighed. "Forgive me, Krishna. I had to use this poor creature to draw you both out here, for I have a favor to ask." He opened his blazing eyes - all four of them - and stared at Arjuna, his two faces glowing red from within. "I am Agni, the fire," he said, his voice licking at Arjuna's ears, "and I will soon shrivel and starve if I cannot devour this forest."

"Ah," said Arjuna, as if this explained everything. Then he blinked. "So... How do you wish us to assist you?" _What's stopping you from just burning up everything in sight?_

"Your father, unfortunately." Agni laughed weakly, again. "Indra has taken this forest and its creatures under his protection. Every time a bit of fire starts in here, the rains appear and drown it out. Capricious and stubborn as always, your father is," Agni said.

"Why won't Indra allow the forest to burn?" Krishna asked.

"Who can understand any of what Indra does or wants?" Agni responded, with more than a hint of bitterness in his fading voice.

"You want me to talk to my father?" Arjuna asked, trying to keep the awed tremble out of his voice.

Agni chuckled. "Oh no, no!" He shook his two faces back and forth. "Indra will no sooner listen to his devakin son than he will to me. Oh no, dear prince. What I want from you is much simpler. I want you to _stop him._"

Arjuna stared at Agni's two faces, no longer caring whether it was disrespectful or not.

"More directly, I want you to stop Indra from bringing his rains. It should not be that difficult of a task for you to stop him, I believe. You have the Gandiva bow, do you not?"

Arjuna's mouth opened and closed, unable to breathe out any words.

"Krishna will aid you," Agni said.

_Great, _Arjuna though dimly.

"Come on, Spider," Krishna said cheerfully, standing up quickly. "We have work to do."

"Hurry," Agni said, looking directly at Arjuna. "I will start my fires soon." He turned his head toward the sky, which was growing dark and black. Stars began to vanish behind rumbling clouds. Warning flashes of lightning streaked through the skies overhead. "He's coming," Agni said.

* * *

To be continued.


	15. Interlude: Shakuni

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: SHAKUNI

* * *

Uluka ran forward and pressed his face against the viewport. "Look at that ocean!" he cried out as they flew low over the waves, approaching Hastinapura's spaceport. "Can we go swimming, Papa?"

Shakuni placed one hand on his son's shoulder and steered him away from the viewing window. "Maybe you can go to the beach with your cousins," Shakuni said, "but you wouldn't want to go swimming in those waters."

"Why not?"

"Sea monsters."

"Yeah, right." Uluka, at the tender age of nine, already knew better than to believe anything that his father told him. Ever.

"It's true," Shakuni said, raising his right hand solemnly. "King's honor. You can ask your cousins if you don't believe me."

"Your Majesty," an aide said, approaching Shakuni and bowing low. "Your Highness," the aide added, with a bow toward Uluka. "Touchdown is estimated in five minutes. Your esteemed family is already awaiting you at the port."

Shakuni pushed Uluka gently. "Go. Nana will get you ready."

"But Papa—"

"You're a crown prince. You need to look your best for the cameras."

Uluka reluctantly shuffled away. Once he was gone, Shakuni turned toward the aide and asked quietly, "Is my sister there, with the party at the port?"

"She is. We have already seen her on camera."

"Well," Shakuni said, tossing a bit of his fine silk drapery over his shoulder in the way that he normally tended to do when vexed. "Let us hope that she doesn't make a scene."

* * *

II.

"You look very handsome," Shakuni said, as a female servant finished adjusting Uluka's elaborate crown, pinning it to his thin, fine hair. Shakuni took his son's hand in his. "Come on," he said. "We're here. Smile big and don't flinch when the cameras go off."

Uluka took a deep breath, and began smiling. He looked good, for a nine-year-old, Shakuni thought. He looked both adorable and regal. But then again, the boy had good genes.

Shakuni and his son stepped through an airlock and onto the carpeted ramp leading from their ship to the spaceport floor below. Cameras from the paparazzi crowding the floor began flashing immediately. Shakuni waved elegantly to his left and to his right. He risked one glance down to the end of the ramp, trying to take stock of the fools' gallery lined up to meet him. The old blind king Dhritarashtra was there, and Shakuni's sister, with that wretched blindfold marring her otherwise spellbinding face. And between them was Shakuni's eldest nephew—

"There's my guy!" Duryodhana said, stepping forward to sweep Uluka up in his arms. Uluka shrieked with delight and the cameras flashed wildly. "I think you were only about _this big_ when I saw you last," Duryodhana said, making a tiny gesture with his fingers.

Dhritarashtra stepped forward and embraced Shakuni. "My brother," he said. "How was your journey?"

"Long," Shakuni chuckled, his best charismatic smile on his face. He was not Dhritarashtra's brother and he loathed the traditional beliefs that forced them to address each other as such. Shakuni pulled out of Dhritarashtra's embrace as gently as he could. The old man stank of salt and seaweed and the slimy fish that the people of Kuru subsisted on. And it always unnerved Shakuni, the way that Dhritarashtra's useless, filmy eyes sometimes gravitated toward the sound of his voice but never toward his face proper. "My son and I are glad to be back on solid ground, Brother."

"You missed my coronation," Duryodhana said, still holding a giggling Uluka in his arms.

"I heard it was quite the spectacle," Shakuni forced a chuckle again. "You really must forgive me. I meant to be here, but, as you well know, the life of a king is never predictable, and some urgent business kept me--"

"Funny," Shakuni's sister Gandhari suddenly said, loudly. "I thought that you couldn't make it because you were preoccupied with being under investigation for fraud and embezzlement and accepting bribes from your--"

Shakuni laughed, loudly. "Oh, ho! As sharp as always." He turned toward Dhritarashtra. "I can see that my sister hasn't changed. She never did understand her place as a woman." Shakuni laughed again, and did not care that Dhritarashtra stared at him coldly instead of joining his laughter.

Shakuni finished laughing, sighed, and wiped a tear from his eye. "Won't you at least welcome your brother?" he asked, stepping toward Gandhari so as to embrace her.

Gandhari returned her brother's embrace stiffly. Shakuni rested his head on her shoulder for a moment, breathed deeply, and sighed. She reeked of salt and seaweed, just like the rest of them. He pulled away from her and watched her face for a moment, sadly. His beautiful, beautiful sister – who had ruined her own eyes and marred her face forever, all for the love of a blind, weak, useless man. King and Queen of the fishmongers. Well, Shakuni's sister always had been foolish.

Shakuni turned toward Duryodhana, who had finally put Uluka down. "So, you're the king now, I hear," Shakuni said, carefully.

Duryodhana nodded. "What gave it away? Was it the glittering headgear?"

Shakuni bellowed laughter again. But as he chortled and wheezed, he squinted his eyes and looked over Duryodhana carefully. Shakuni had met Duryodhana once, years before, when Uluka had been newly born and he had brought the baby to visit his family on Kuru for the first and, since then, the only time. At the time, Shakuni had been impressed with Duryodhana. The young prince had been strong, handsome, charismatic, and confident. He had seemed to have inherited all of the magnificent royal blood flowing in his mother's veins and none from those of his feeble father. Now, looking at Duryodhana standing side-by-side with Uluka, Shakuni could tell that they were cut from the same cloth.

"Come," Duryodhana said, tugging at Uluka's hand. "Let's go back to the palace. You can meet all the rest of your cousins."

"Hey," Uluka said, craning his neck to look up at Duryodhana. "Are there really sea monsters on this planet?"

"Oh, yes. Lots of them."

"_Nuh-uh_."

"Yes huh. There are some stuffed ones in my palace. I'll show you."

Surrounded by bodyguards and aides, the party began making their way across the spaceport floor and toward the fleet of hoverers awaiting them. An aide named Sanjaya led the blind king by his hand, which left Shakuni free to walk beside his sister at the back of the party, as the bodyguards behind them shooed away persistent photographers.

"You _did _miss Duryodhana's coronation," Gandhari said, pointedly. "He asked me if you would be there. Not that I could have cared less, but _he _wanted you to be there."

"And you missed Father's funeral," Shakuni hissed in return.

Gandhari's shoulders stiffened. "Why are you here?" she whispered.

"To pay my respects to my nephew. And because Uluka will be a king someday as well, and it's important for him to know that he has family on Kuru."

"Really." Gandhari brushed a lock of her long, graying hair impatiently over her shoulder. "What a perfectly noble purpose for a visit. That doesn't sound like you at all."

* * *

III.

The dinner feast was long, and nearly insufferable for Shakuni. He could hardly keep the names of his hundred nephews straight, he hated eating fish, and being forced to be respectful and humble toward Dhritarashtra was almost more than he could bear.

After dinner was finished, Shakuni ordered his servants and the nanny to tuck Uluka into bed, then approached Duryodhana as soon as he had the chance. "Could you use a drink?" Shakuni asked, leaning in toward his nephew. "My guest quarters have come furnished with quite the selection."

Duryodhana nodded. "Thank you," he said, although Shakuni noted the caution in his voice. "Twenty hundred hours?"

"Splendid."

Shakuni retired to his guest quarters. They were admittedly nice, the nicest that this planet of poor fishmongers could have possibly offered. And, as promised, at precisely twenty hundred hours, Duryodhana entered the study where Shakuni was waiting for him, waved away his bodyguards, and then sat down slowly.

"Would you care for something?" Shakuni asked, standing up to serve Duryodhana a drink. There were no more servants or bodyguards in the room. The two of them were alone.

"No thank you," Duryodhana said, politely. "I'm supposed to be cutting back. Blood pressure, you know."

"Of course I know." Shakuni poured Duryodhana a shot of lickfire anyway. "But may I say, speaking as one king to another, that a sip of this stuff every night is one of the few things that has kept me sane over the years."

Duryodhana accepted his glass but did not drink from it. "Why did you want to see me?" he asked, bluntly.

Shakuni smiled at him. "Because you're my family. But I feel as if I've hardly even met you. And now here you are, already grown and a king."

Duryodhana peered at Shakuni suspiciously. "So those things that Mother says about you…"

"Are true." Shakuni sat himself down in a chair across from Duryodhana. "I have been under investigation for… certain crimes. Which of course doesn't mean that I ever committed them. A king, no matter how honest or good, will always have enemies, Duryodhana."

Duryodhana still stared at Shakuni.

"You don't believe me," Shakuni said.

Duryodhana shook his head.

"I see that you've inherited your mother's, ah, forthrightness." Shakuni chuckled. "And her tendency to jump to conclusions."

Duryodhana set down his glass on a nearby end table. "A king must always be honest," he said, pointedly.

"So. Let us be honest, then." Shakuni finished his shot of lickfire in one swallow. "So tell me, king. Are you completely honest?" Shakuni peered at Duryodhana, a small, smug smile dancing on his lips. "Is there no secret that you wish to keep from the world?"

Duryodhana stiffened.

Shakuni chuckled again. "I see." He leaned back in his seat. "A king must be honest, true. But a king must also do what is best for his people. Sometimes, if there is a truth that, were it to become known, would do more harm than good, then a king is justified--"

"Mother rarely speaks of you," Duryodhana said, suddenly.

"Ah. Good. And here I was, afraid that she was constantly telling you lies about me."

"Why did you come here?" Duryodhana asked, again.

Shakuni stood up to pour himself another drink. "You know how much I love your mother," Shakuni said, "despite our bickerings. She is my only sister. And your father… is like a brother to me. That makes you my family. And you are my blood." Shakuni sat down again, this time with a glass of wine in his hand. "I came because I wish to look out for your best interests. You may be the king of Kuru, but you are also Gandharan royal blood, and as your elder, it's my responsibility to look after you."

"But I don't need looking after," Duryodhana protested.

"Really?" Shakuni swirled the liquor in the glass he was holding. "Because it seems to me as if you just lost half of the kingdom that should rightfully be yours."

"Perhaps…" Duryodhana said, cautiously.

"This planet is your birthright," Shakuni went on, fervently. It was easy for him to sound fervent, during the rare moments when he was actually honest. "You should rule all of it. You _must _rule all of it. We must make that happen."

" 'We'?" Duryodhana was still cautious, guarded. "Is this the part where you promise to be on my side?"

"Well." Shakuni took a sip of his drink. "You don't see me visiting Yudhisthira and licking _his_ ass, now do you?"

Duryodhana shuddered. "Please don't make me think of Yudhisthira's… anatomy."

Shakuni bellowed laughter. "He has a sense of humor! And here I was afraid that you had gotten nothing from your mother's genes."

Duryodhana seemed to relax in his seat, a little bit. He took a sip of his drink. Shakuni watched him carefully, taking mental notes in his head. Humor diffused him. Complimenting his mother, whether she deserved it or not, relaxed him. Shakuni loathed Duryodhana's father almost as much as he hated his sister for betraying herself and her family when she married him. But Shakuni had done his homework, and he knew that Duryodhana would not tolerate any insult against his parents. He was deeply loyal to them both. Well, that was all right, for now, Shakuni thought. He certainly couldn't hold filial loyalty against the boy. But for the time being, Shakuni knew that he would have to watch his tongue, if he wanted Duryodhana to trust him.

"From one king to another," Duryodhana said, carefully. "Yes. I've thought about that. I've thought about how to reunite the kingdom again." He straightened up in his seat. "And it's not just because I want to rule it, either! It's because… Because the kingdom shouldn't _be _divided. It's bad for everyone. It goes against everything that my ancestors worked so hard to accomplish."

_It was your loathsome idiot father who divided the kingdom_, Shakuni thought, but did not say. How long before he could get Duryodhana to see how different he was from either of his parents? How much _better _he was? But that would take time. Shakuni had patience. Instead, Shakuni said, "You have to start with your strengths. The people in your corner, that is. You have been building a strong court, haven't you?"

Duryodhana nodded. "I have all of my brothers. Dusshasana is an excellent military strategist. So is Durmukha. Sama can wrap the parliament around his little finger."

"Right…"

"Then there's my priest, Ashwatthama. You met him at dinner."

"Yes, he… He seemed awfully young."

"He's stronger than you think," Duryodhana said. This time it was his turn to look smug. "And the King of Anga. You also met him at dinner."

"A striking young man, yes. But a commoner."

"He's the strongest warrior Kuru has ever known. And he's not a commoner – he's a devakin."

"Somehow, I doubt that this man's ability to use a magical bow or bench-press however many mass units will be of much use to you in getting the rest of your kingdom back."

Duryodhana's face darkened. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you should not be looking toward brute force." Shakuni leaned forward toward Duryodhana. "When your cousin is your rival, then you could not – should not – be relying on strength to defeat him. Rather, use your wits." Shakuni tapped his forehead. "An inexperienced priest and a secondary school dropout will hardly be of much help to you."

Duryodhana gave Shakuni a long, hard look. Then he tried one more name. "Yuyutsu."

"Bastard," Shakuni spat, unable to hide his contempt. Yuyutsu was the result of the idiot king's infidelity – his betrayal of Shakuni's sister. It rankled Shakuni that his sister allowed Yuyutsu to continue living. His very existence shamed all of Shakuni's family.

Duryodhana, however, did not back down. "Sorry to bring up a touchy subject," he said, not sounding sorry at all, "but Yuyutsu is among my most intelligent and learned servants."

"Oh, _really._"

"And he is strong. Strong in ways that you can't imagine."

"Enlighten me."

Duryodhana's shoulders suddenly stiffened. "That's… classified. Um, classified information."

"Then it's useless to us." Shakuni shook his head. "If you will be a true king, Duryodhana, then you need to look at the big picture. The kingdom must be reunited, and you must be the one to do it. I can't promise that this won't be a delicate task, however. What it comes down to, in the end, is that you _must take _the other half of the kingdom away from your cousin Yudhisthira_._"

"Easier said than done."

"I will help you."

"Then I can count you as one of my strengths?"

"Precisely." Shakuni set aside his glass. "Now we move on. We know your strengths, but what about your rival's weaknesses?"

Duryodhana laughed. "Where to begin?" He sighed. "Yudhisthira has no confidence, no charisma, no stage presence, no camera presence, and no ability to lead. He's addicted to smokerolls and drinking and probably gambling, too. His brothers are no help. Bhima is a moronic brute. The twins are sociopaths. And Arjuna is… Arjuna." Duryodhana laughed again. "All talk of conspiracy aside, I've often thought to myself that if I just sat back and waited, Yudhisthira would somehow find a way to lose his own kingdom. I mean, it's not like he can really hold onto it in the first place."

"A pleasant thought," Shakuni said, standing up slowly. "But unwise. Do not underestimate your cousin, Duryodhana. He is a devakin. They can be tricky, those ones."

Duryodhana snorted. "Yudhisthira doesn't even have a Gift. Thirty years old, and no sign of a Gift! That means he'll likely never have one."

"Still." Shakuni re-corked the bottle of lickfire that he opened. "We should watch. And wait." He reached out and took Duryodhana's hands in his. "Thank you. I am glad that we had this talk. I wanted you to know that you and I were, shall we say, on the same page."

Duryodhana stood up carefully, his hands still held in Shakuni's. "How do I know that I can trust you?" he asked.

"Because you and I share the same blood."

Duryodhana looked at Shakuni for a long, long moment. Then he closed his eyes and seemed to breathe in deeply. Suddenly, Shakuni felt as if a cold, icy wind was blowing up through his robes. He shivered, but the moment passed, and Duryodhana's eyes snapped open again. "Yes," he said, pulling his hands away from Shakuni's. "I can trust you."

Shakuni glanced around the room, and shivered again. "Is there a draft in here?"

"I don't feel anything." Duryodhana turned to leave. "Welcome to my corner, Your Majesty," he said.

Shakuni bowed low as he watched Duryodhana leave. A handsome, brave, strong man, Shakuni thought with satisfaction, once he was alone in the study again. A _worthy _king. Not at all like his father. Shakuni shuddered at the thought of Dhritarashtra – hateful, blind, stupid Dhritarashtra. Useless king of the fishermen who had taken Shakuni's sister away from him. Idiot king who had denied Duryodhana his birthright. Traitorous king who had betrayed Shakuni's family and his own family as well.

But Duryodhana was different. Duryodhana shared Shakuni's blood. And Shakuni was damned if he wasn't going to make sure that Duryodhana got what he deserved in life.

"It's a good thing," Shakuni said to himself as he poured himself another drink, "that I'm such a selfless, loving person."

* * *

To be continued.


	16. Chapter 08: Night of the Gandharvas

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHT: NIGHT OF THE GANDHARVAS

* * *

"This is insane," Arjuna said, fitting the first arrow to his bow.

"Here it is," Krishna said, ignoring Arjuna's protest. "Just like he said it would be."

_It _made a growling noise in its throat and stomped its hooves impatiently. "That's a ram," Arjuna said.

"He told us it would be a ram." Krishna jumped up onto the ram's elaborate gilded saddle in one smooth, easy motion. The ram made another growling sound and stamped impatiently again. Arjuna stared at it. It had red skin and burning eyes and golden ornaments dangling from its horns. Those ornaments didn't seem very practical, in Arjuna's mind. The ram was also impossibly gigantic. There was room for at least two men on the saddle on its back.

"Up," Krishna said, holding out his hand.

"I've never ridden anything like, um, that before."

"It's not rocket science."

Arjuna gripped his bow in one hand and reached for Krishna's hand with his other. He wasn't sure what happened, but one moment he had two feet on the ground, the next, a saddle in his crotch. He seemed awfully far off the ground. And the heaving, trembling back of the ram did not seem to be the most stable support for—

"Don't grab at me," Krishna said. "You'll need both hands free to use that bow of yours."

"Then how do I hold on?"

"With your legs."

The ram stepped forward, and Arjuna nearly pitched backward and right off it. "Whoa!" he cried out, grabbing at the back of Krishna's jacket. He steadied himself again, and squeezed with his legs. The ram took another step forward, and another, moving its massive, hot body across a grassy knoll overlooking the forest. Thunder rumbled overhead, and lightning flashed as if in warning. Wind pushed against Arjuna's hair and clothes.

"I hope that Spider made it to a safe distance," Krishna said, shielding his eyes against the wind.

"I wouldn't worry about Spider," Arjuna said, as the ram took its first step into thin air, and then began climbing into the sky. "I would worry about us."

"We'll be fine. Agni wouldn't have asked you to do this if you couldn't do it."

"Me, sure." Arjuna wobbled and fought to steady himself, without holding onto Krishna or the ram or anything but the bow in his hands. The ram heaved up and down as it stepped up and further up, climbing the air toward the storm clouds overhead. "What exactly are _you_ supposed to be doing?" Arjuna asked.

"Watching your back, and steering this thing."

"But you're in _front _of me--" Arjuna made the mistake of looking down. "Wait, wait, wait. How far up are we going?"

"Into the clouds. That's the only way to stop Indra. We have to get him before he can--"

"We can't _breathe_ up there!"

"We'll be fine."

"You keep saying that!" Arjuna had to shout against the rising wind whipping around him, threatening to push him right off the back of the ram, which was obliviously plodding its way into the thunderheads above.

Arjuna closed his eyes tightly shut for a moment, praying that when he opened them he would find himself sitting on solid ground again, everything since his interrupted meditation under the stars having turned out to be a dream. But the wind pushing against him and the moisture condensing on his skin would not go away. When Arjuna opened his eyes again, the ground was completely gone – as was the night sky and the world to either side of him. There was nothing in any direction but gray, illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning. Thunder cracked overhead and below. But at least the wind had died down, here in the center of the maelstrom waiting to be born.

Arjuna opened and closed his mouth, breathing experimentally. There shouldn't have been enough oxygen up here in the middle of a thunderhead, yet somehow he was breathing fine. The electricity in the air was making all of the hair on his body stand on end. Well, maybe not just the electricity.

"There!" Krishna suddenly cried out, pointing straight ahead. "Did you see that?"

Arjuna squinted, unable to see anything but gray. Suddenly, something flashed across his vision – a blur of white and red. Arjuna swallowed. "It's him."

"He saw us. Brace yourself."

Arjuna opened his mouth to ask _For what? _but it instantaneously became a moot point. A bolt of lightning shot out of the clouds surrounding them and headed straight for Arjuna. Arjuna saw the flash of light out of the corner of his eye, felt the electrical charge run up his spine, wondered briefly what it would feel like to be barbequed alive. He would have at least winced, if he'd had the time. But the lightning didn't strike him; there was a flash a few inches from Arjuna's shoulder, and the lightning bolt bounced back into the gray.

"…What just happened?!"

"Don't worry," Krishna said, reaching into his jacket again, and pulling out a thin rod of metal. He flicked his wrist, and the rod expanded into a series of concentric metal plates. Krishna aimed and tossed the resulting circular disk into the gray abyss. Another approaching bolt of lightning hit the disc and bounced back into the clouds. The disc, however, exploded into a cloud of vaporized metal.

"What are those things?" Arjuna asked as Krishna paused a moment to steady their mount by patting its head and pointing it toward another distant flash of red and white.

"Chakra. Useful for hunting small rodents, under normal circumstances." Krishna leaned dangerously far over to his side, pulling another metal rod out of his boot. "I don't have an unlimited supply, though. I'll be the defense if you be the offense, all right?"

"Right." Arjuna raised his bow and aimed into the clouds. He squinted again, willing his eyesight to penetrate the murk. Maybe he couldn't see, but he could taste the electricity crackling around him, seeming to run in currents through the air, pointing toward a point just beyond where the thickening clouds obscured Arjuna's vision.

Arjuna uttered a prayer and fired a lightning-tipped arrow into the cloudy abyss.

There was a sound that might have been a crack of thunder, or that might have been the thunderous, reverberating cry of an otherworldly wounded animal.

Arjuna willed another arrow to appear on his bow. He narrowed his eyes, breathing slowly and steadily, aiming not with his vision but with the taste of the rain and wind in the air. He refused to notice or acknowledge the ram lurching beneath him, or the bolts of lightning flashing out of the night and exploding as they were deflected all around him. He released another arrow.

The entire world screamed in response, lightning and wind and a bone-rattling crack of thunder slamming into Arjuna from all sides.

"I think you hurt him," Krishna said, sending the ram into a brief dive to avoid another bolt of lightning. Krishna dropped the ram's reigns to pull out another chakra, this time from a pouch on his belt. "Oh good, a miracle. I thought I should have run out of these things by now."

The ram was now galloping through the air, much faster and more gracefully than it had moved on the way up. Arjuna was no longer afraid of its heaving, unstable motions. He squeezed with his legs and held his bow steady. He sniffed the air, tasted the electricity crackling around him, and tuned out the crack of thunder rattling his teeth in his skull, searching for his target again.

All of a sudden, the world around Arjuna was no longer bleak and gray. The skies were filled with crying streaks of color plummeting toward him.

Instinctively, Arjuna began firing his arrows. _Just like fighting Nakula's drones, _he told himself, sending off arrow after arrow without pause, faster than he had ever fired before, faster than would have been possible for any other human. Arjuna could not let himself truly look at his targets, he couldn't let himself see their human faces or feathers or fur-covered legs or long claws reaching out to rend him limb from limb—

A metal chakra flew across the sky, beheading several. And then another, and another. The creatures screamed as arrows of fire and lightning pierced their hearts or severed their heads from their bodies. Empty-eyed screaming faces, dismembered feather-covered hands, and claw-tipped feet fell from the sky.

And then, almost as soon as they had appeared, Arjuna realized that he was out of targets. The remaining creatures screeched at each other in inhuman voices and retreated back into the gloom.

Arjuna allowed himself to clutch at Krishna for a moment, Gandiva vanishing from his hands. "What--?"

"Gandharvas. Indra's servants."

Arjuna willed Gandiva back into his hands. "Did we beat them?"

"No. They're just regrouping." Krishna turned his face toward a distant flash of lightning, which illuminated a dark mass of twisting, writhing, angry-looking shadows flying toward them. "Here they come again."

* * *

II.

Sahadeva sighed and sat up in his bed, as another crack of thunder sounded overhead. "I wish it would hurry up and rain," he whispered.

Yudhisthira, the only other one awake, nodded slowly, turning over on his side to watch the rest of his brothers. Bhima was asleep and snoring contentedly, a massive dark lump buried deep beneath his own blankets. Bhima was at one end of the tent, and Yudhisthira at the other end; between then were the twins, one of whom was asleep, and other sitting up in his bed and very much not.

Yudhisthira stared at the still, sleeping form of Nakula. "How can he sleep through this?" Yudhisthira whispered.

Sahadeva reached over to his brother's bed and brushed back a lock of Nakula's hair. "Earplugs."

"Smart. Does he have any more?"

"Of course not." The interior of their tent was illuminated with the third flash of lightning in less than a minute. Yudhisthira's eyes were dazzled with the afterglow. Thunder was rumbling overhead almost constantly now. "Why isn't it raining?" Sahadeva asked. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

Yudhisthira shrugged, which was a bit of feat when he was lying on his side. "I don't know."

"Mmmm." Sahadeva hugged his legs to his chest. "Arjuna is out there."

"It's all right. You know he loves to be outside for this kind of weather."

Sahadeva hummed to himself for a moment, rocking back and forth on top of his bed. Yudhisthira wondered if this meant that Sahadeva had withdrawn from their conversation. Yudhisthira opened his mouth to whisper something else, but all of a sudden, there was a thump against the tent canvas directly above his head. Yudhisthira glanced upward just as another flash of lightning brilliantly illuminated his vision for a brief moment – long enough for him to see the shadowy thing rolling down the top of the tent above him, leaving behind trailing streaks of black liquid as it slid toward the ground. One end of the whatever-it-was was a gooey mess, but the other end kind of, sort of, _maybe_ looked like a hand with five outstretched fingers.

Yudhisthira jumped up and out of his bed. He ran toward the tent entrance, not bothering with his robe or boots, not answering the confused mumbles of the bodyguards that he woke up when he nearly stepped all over them. Barefooted, Yudhisthira pounded into the grass outside and around to the side of the tent.

A frigid wind tore at his nightclothes and snatched his breath away. Thunder crackled and lightning flashed overhead. Yudhisthira saw what had fallen from the sky and hit the top of his tent, now lying in a thickening puddle of sharp-smelling blood in the grass at his feet. It was an arm. It might have been a human arm, if not for the unnaturally long fingers, or the impossibly long claws tipping each finger.

"Your Majesty--?"

Yudhisthira turned toward two of his bodyguards, who had followed him outside. "Um," he croaked.

Sahadeva, who _had _paused to slip on shoes and a robe, stepped around the bodyguards, saw what was resting in the grass at Yudhisthira's feet, and clapped his hands over his mouth as if to stifle a scream.

A flash of lightning suddenly threw the world into black-and-white relief. Yudhisthira saw the black blood of the severed arm seeping across the grass and into the canvas at the base of histent, saw the white flesh of the horrible thing pulled tight across its outstretched fingers, and suddenly had to clap a hand over _his _mouth to hold back his regurgitated dinner. The flesh on the severed arm began to bubble and hiss, and then to melt and evaporate, as did the blood, fading away and vanishing into nothing.

_Yes yes please oh gods make it go away--_

Thunder cracked overhead. And there was suddenly another wet thump in the grass somewhere to Yudhisthira's right, and then another, to his left. A third thump as _something _hit the top of a different tent and then bounced off, landing with a splat on the ground behind him.

Another flash of lightning illuminated a dark, round shadow that rolled across the grass toward Sahadeva,. He stood paralyzed as it rolled to a rest in front of him. It stared up at him with its dead eyes and open, snarling, tooth-lined mouth.

The bodyguards reached for Sahadeva and made as if to pull him away from the severed head at his feet, but it was too late. Sahadeva opened his mouth and screamed.

The entire camp was definitely going to wake up now, Yudhisthira thought. As voices began to cry out and lights were switched on all around him, Yudhisthira glanced toward the horizon, and saw the distant glow of flame in what should have been the direction of the forest where Arjuna had gone.

_That can't be, _he thought numbly. _It's too cold for a forest fire._

_

* * *

_

III.

Arjuna blanketed the sky with arrows, cutting down the latest wave of gandharvas in mid-flight. He caught another distant glimpse of the red creature in the sky, and fired a volley of arrows. Lightning shot toward him from all sides, but the ram that Arjuna was riding dodged and wove through the air with impossible speed and grace, and Krishna was quick with his chakras.

"We're getting closer!" Krishna shouted over the exploding claps of thunder all around them. "You have to force him to retreat before he can release the rains!"

_Forgive me,_ Arjuna prayed to Indra as he fired another volley of arrows. They were his own weapons of lightning. They flashed as they struck their distant target, and the red man howled in pain and fury. But Arjuna didn't let up. He fired again, and again, without pause, without mercy. A gandharva streaked out of the sky toward him, its claws outstretched. Arjuna wasted a fraction of a second briefly turning his bow toward it, and then turned back toward Indra as the stricken gandharva screamed and clutched at the arrow in its heart, plummeting down toward the ground.

Krishna grabbed the reigns of their ram again and urged him forward, through the clouds. Arjuna aimed another arrow, and then—

All of a sudden, there was no need to aim. Arjuna's target was right in front of him.

Time seemed to slow to a stop. Arjuna and Krishna and their ram floated in the eye of the storm that they had fought their way through, floating in a hushed, otherworldly silence. There was no thunder in here, and no wind, and no sound, save for their own breathing. The red man, wild-eyed and bleeding rain, expanded across the sky, his four arms grasping and clutching at distant streaks of lightning. Beneath him stood a white elephant, its smooth shining skin studded with arrows, sinking down to its knees and as it shuddered with pain. The red man breathed in and out, his eyes burning, his breath rank with fury.

_Let me rain,_ the red man said.

Krishna closed his eyes and leaned forward, stroking the neck of their trembling ram. Arjuna raised his bow and aimed for the point between the red man's eyes.

The red man suddenly laughed, and his flesh ran and trembled. And instant later, he was covered with eyes – he was nothing _but _eyes – thousands of eyes, millions of eyes, filling the sky from one horizon to another, and all of them staring straight at Arjuna, staring straight at him and _through _him with their wet, angry gaze.

_Try, _the eyes screamed at him in a challenge. _Try, human, and I will crush you like an insignificant insect._

For a moment, Arjuna trembled with genuine terror. The eyes held him in their gaze, burning him, tearing him apart, making his flesh crawl and his bowels clench—

But then, he closed his own eyes – or perhaps winced, to the same effect – and the red man's soul-searing gaze was gone. And so was his fear. _Ah, _Arjuna thought, as he raised his bow again, his eyes still closed. _How easy._

Arjuna squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and breathed in and out slowly, deeply, tasting the electricity in the air. He could feel his target even without having to see it. So he turned his bow a bit to the left, then a bit to the right, and then fired one single arrow into the abyss.

The storm screamed.

Arjuna opened his eyes and saw the _other _eyes whirling about the sky in a maelstrom. Then they were gone and there was only the red man again, clutching at the arrow protruding from what had once been his right eye. For a moment, the red man stretched across the sky again, filling the horizon with his four lightning-tipped arms. But then he collapsed into himself, crying out in pain. And then there was just a small man swooning on top of a wounded elephant. The elephant, with the bleeding man on its back, knelt down and began sinking through the clouds toward the ground below.

The clouds began to dissolve almost as quickly as they had formed. The lightning was no more, and the thunder just a distant echo. Arjuna looked down at the ground far, far below. Without the clouds obscuring his vision, he could finally see clearly the orange flames and clouds of smoke beginning to devour the forest below them.

Arjuna breathed in and out, slowly. Gandiva vanished from his hands. And then he leaned forward, carefully, and clutched at Krishna's waist.

"Is it all right for me to hold on now?" Arjuna croaked.

"I think so," Krishna said, tugging at the ram's reigns. The ram began to walk, in a stately, slow fashion, down though the sky and toward the ground.

Arjuna closed his eyes and waited for the descent to be over. He felt exhausted, utterly spent. Perhaps it had been the advanced meditation and calming techniques that he had learned from Mr. Drona that had kept Arjuna alive during the battle – or perhaps it had been pure adrenaline alone. Arjuna rather suspected the latter.

Moments later, however, the ram touched down on solid ground. Arjuna felt a blast of heat, and coughed as he breathed in a whiff of smoke. He opened his eyes, turned his head, and saw that they had landed on a small hill overlooking the forest being consumed by flames, not too far from them.

Krishna hopped off the back of the ram, held out his hand, and helped Arjuna down. "Come on," he said, grasping the reigns again and gently leading the ram over to the other side of the hill. "We have to return this poor thing."

Arjuna followed Krishna in silence for a few steps, his mind dangerously close to finally letting the events of the past hour actually sink in. "Um," he said.

"Yes?"

Arjuna stared at the back of Krishna's head. _You seem awfully calm about all of this _suddenly seemed like a very stupid thing to say. "Have you ever done something like this before?" Arjuna asked instead.

"Well," Krishna said, turning his head back toward Arjuna, "I have ridden on the back of an animal before."

"Oh…"

"It was when I was ten years old, when this traveling circus came into town. They offered elephant rides for five credits each. I only had one, but it was so much fun."

"Oh."

Arjuna and Krishna rounded the top of the hill and began stepping carefully down its other side. Heat from the nearby forest fire pushed at their backs, and the flames illuminated the night, stretching their shadows out in front of them. Arjuna glanced down and saw two men waiting for them at the bottom of the hill.

One was Agni, his red skin glowing with health and his two faces mercifully merged into one, beaming up at Arjuna with a bright, rosy-cheeked smile. The other was Indra, pale and pink, his clothing and flesh torn and bleeding, his four arms hanging limply from his sides. What should have been his right eye was instead a bloody smear on his face. Indra's massive white elephant knelt on the ground beside him, looking carefully disinterested in everything, including its own wounds, in the way that elephants were particularly skilled at.

"Thank you, thank you!" Agni said, stepping toward them with outstretched arms. For a moment, Arjuna was afraid that the god was actually going to hug him. But instead, Agni wrapped his arms around the neck of his ram and stroked it lovingly. "Yes, you're such a good boy, yes you are."

Arjuna glanced toward Indra, then glanced down at his own feet.

"You. Boy," Indra said.

Arjuna swallowed. He could feel the devakin markings on his back crawling with a strange kind of electricity, they way he had felt when he had knelt before Agni earlier that night.

Indra seemed to _sniff _at Arjuna, "What manner of creature are you?" Indra asked, his voice rumbling.

Arjuna opened his mouth to answer, but Agni bellowed laughter and answered for him, "This boy is a devakin. He's your son."

Indra seemed genuinely taken aback. He frowned deeply at Arjuna and said, "That cannot be."

"It's true," Arjuna said quickly. He willed Gandiva to appear in his hands, and it did, weaving itself into existence from rain and lightning. "This is my Gift. You gave it to me."

Indra's mouth seemed to hang open. Arjuna was suddenly afraid that he would start laughing, out of sheer exhaustion or nerves or both. He had never imagined that someday he would see a god standing in front of him, covered in blood, and holding his mouth open with an almost cartoonish expression of surprise on his face.

Indra stepped forward, reached out, and touched Gandiva. Then he slowly stretched out his hand, and brushed his fingers against Arjuna's forehead. Arjuna shivered from head to toe. It _was _like being struck by lightning.

"You are my son," Indra said. He leaned back and stood up straight, staring down at Arjuna with his one good eye. "You took my eye."

"Only in a metaphorical sense," Agni pointed out. "You have plenty to spare."

"You defeated me," Indra said.

Arjuna looked down at his feet again.

Agni led his ram over toward where Indra's elephant was crouched. "I told you, you should have let me have that forest in the first place."

Indra brooded like a black thundercloud. "You are unfair. Many innocent creatures are dying because of you. Trees. Birds. Small animals. Deer."

"The forest must be cleansed."

"You are merely being gluttonous."

Agni snorted laughter and turned his glowing, rosy-cheeked face toward Arjuna for one last time. "Forgive my brother for his obstinacy. He never does enjoy being defeated in battle."

Indra seemed to cough.

"We devas will remember you, Prince Arjuna, for having faced our king and your own father in battle, and for having bested him. But," Agni added with a wink, "Before you grow arrogant or full of yourself, young man, I would like to point out that my brother has been defeated multiple times by even the lowest-ranked asura--"

"Ravana was _not _'low-ranked'--"

"I was not speaking of Ravana."

Indra snorted through his nose, a noise which managed to sound ominous enough. He turned his bloody face toward Arjuna and said, "I am impressed. And angry. Most fortunately for you, more impressed than angry." He climbed slowly and regally on top of his elephant, which groaned and stood up with equal slowness. "We will remember this, and you."

"Thank you boys," Agni said, mounting his ram with one smooth, easy motion. "You have pleased the devas."

Indra and Agni turned their mounts away from Arjuna, and began climbing back into the sky. Arjuna bowed low, touching the grass beneath him with his hands and forehead, and waited until he sensed that the gods were gone.

When he sensed that he and Krishna were alone again, Arjuna stood up out of his bow. He straightened his back and watched Krishna, who was standing with his face turned toward the sky. Arjuna wondered if Krishna had bothered to bow in front of the gods or not. Arjuna had been too busy being awed to take notice.

Krishna turned toward Arjuna and smiled. "You could tell that they were brothers," he said, and laughed.

Arjuna stood for a moment, brushing the grass off his knees, feeling the heat of the forest fire blazing just on the other side of the hill where he stood. He breathed in and out, slowly, forcing his mind to remain calm. It seemed quite easy, all of a sudden, to convince himself that he had dreamed or imagined the whole thing. Surely he hadn't just met and spoken to a pair of gods that night. Surely he hadn't been riding through the sky on the back of an enchanted ram and single-handedly (well, almost) defeating an entire army of—

Arjuna suddenly clapped his hands over his mouth and gagged.

"What?" Krishna asked.

"I killed them," Arjuna gasped. "Those gandharvas. They were divine and they were alive and _I killed them._ I cut off their heads and arms and legs and--" Arjuna sank to his knees. "I've taken the lives of animals with my arrows before, but I've never, _never _taken the lives of… Uh…" He wasn't sure how to finish. He wanted to say _people _but the gandharvas were not people. They were far more than simple-minded animals, however. And their faces had been so horrifically human.

"So?" Krishna asked, scratching at his ear absentmindedly. "And?"

"And I didn't even have to think about it. I didn't even hesitate. It was like…" Arjuna licked his lips. "I thought to myself, it was just like shooting at drones. _Machines. _But those weren't machines."

"And you killed them quite well, I might add."

Arjuna shot Krishna a dark look. Then he steadied himself, and stood up slowly. He said nothing, and turned away from Krishna. Arjuna placed his hand over his heart, and felt a faint echo of the pain that Mr. Drona had warned him would be there, if he ever used too many of his arrows at once. He felt more than a faint sense of numbness, too, both in body and in spirit. That was the price that he paid for using a devaweapon – each arrow that he fired was a piece of his own heart, and the more he used, the more of his own heart that he tore away. A human heart would always create itself anew, Mr. Drona had said, expanding and growing to fulfill the emptiness left behind by what had torn away and turned into weapons. But that would take time.

Arjuna sighed. Maybe the numbness was a good thing. It made it a bit easier to deal with the events of the night so far, without going insane. "Is it over?" he asked Krishna.

"Maybe. Give it a moment."

Arjuna waited a moment, listening, watching.

And then, from the other side of the hill, from the direction of the forest fire, came a long, frightened, wailing cry.

"That's no animal," Krishna said, already pelting up the hill and toward the fire. "It doesn't sound human, either."

Arjuna followed him without thinking. After all, what was one more supernatural encounter that night?

* * *

IV.

The forest was consumed in flame. Arjuna at first recoiled away from the heat that he could feel blasting toward him as he and Krishna walked toward the inferno. Then he figured that as long as Krishna kept marching forward, he might as well join him. The smoke made him cough. He could hear the roar of the flames, the crack and crash of branches collapsing, occasionally the (mercifully distant) scream of an animal—

And then there was that cry again, that cry that did not sound like any animal Arjuna had ever heard of.

Krishna suddenly grabbed Arjuna's arm and pointed. "_There!_"

There was a person on fire, struggling to climb his way over a fallen, blazing tree trunk and into the clear.

Arjuna acted without thinking. Gandiva came alive in his hands. He summoned the water astra from deep within his memories, and fired.

A wave of water splashed over the burning figure. He gurgled, stumbled over the doused tree trunk, and fell into a gangly somersault that somehow managed to propel him past the edge of the fire and into the surrounding grass that would surely catch ablaze in moments.

Arjuna dashed forward and grabbed at the man's shoulders. He grunted, struggling to pull the man further into the clear. How could one person – if it was a person – be so incredibly heavy? But then Krishna was there, gathering up the man's feet and legs and helping Arjuna lift. The two of them managed to carry the wet, gasping creature across the scrubland and over the hill where they had seen off Indra and Agni, before they gently laid him down. And then Arjuna got a good look at the man for the first time, his features illuminated by the ever-increasing glow from the forest fire.

It could have been a human man, save for the odd curved shape of his arms, the slightly _off _proportions of his face, the translucent bluish skin, and the equally odd translucent bluish hair falling in woven clumps all around the man's face. Strangely- bizarrely – there was no sign that the man had been burnt at all, save for what resembled a char mark near his left shoulder. Other than that, the man's simple traveling clothes – trousers and a jacket and boots, the likes of which Krishna wore – were utterly unmarked. Which was impossible, because Arjuna had just seen the man literally engulfed in flame.

The not-quite-man coughed, blinked, and then opened his eyes. He looked straight up at Arjuna, and Arjuna suddenly had to look away. He had to fight not to whimper. He had no name for the color of the man's eyes, but one look at them and the devakin markings on his back had begun to burn so bright and hot that he was afraid his skin might actually be blistering. It was nothing at all like the sensation he had felt when he had been in front of Agni and Indra. It was an entirely different feeling – an entirely unpleasant one. Arjuna was instinctually, animalistically afraid of the color of the man's eyes.

The man sat up and sniffled, wringing out his hair and clothes with his unnaturally long, slender fingers. "Are you the one who saved me?" he asked Arjuna. At least his voice sounded normal.

Arjuna nodded slowly, then gathered up his courage, and turned his head to face the man again. What he saw made him gas. Now the not-quite-man looked like a man. Gone were the curling ears and strangely-proportioned face and odd skin and odder hair. Gone were the eyes from another world. The man sitting in front of Arjuna was still wet, and still dressed in his traveling clothes, but now he had dusky-colored, human-looking skin, long, tangled black-brown hair, and normal, unassuming brown eyes. He smiled at Arjuna, and his smile was kind. "Thank you," he said. "I would rather have a bit of water up my nose than be burned alive."

_You don't look like you were burned at all, _Arjuna thought.

"Here," Krishna said, taking off his patched jacket and wrapping it around the man's shoulders. "You'll catch cold."

"Thank you," the man said, clutching Krishna's jacket around his own soaked jacket. "Please tell me who you two are."

Arjuna kneeled before the man. "Arjuna," he said, "third prince of Khandavaprastha. And this is one of my subjects, Krishna."

The man blinked. "Khandava has royalty now?"

"Yes..."

The man nodded. "And I am Mayasura," he said.

Arjuna held still for a moment, wondering if he had heard the man right. "Mayasura?"

"Yes."

"As in," Arjuna said, lifting his head, "the legendary asura architect?" His mouth twitched in a half-smile, hoping that this man would understand that he was in on the joke.

Mayasura returned Arjuna's half-smile. "The one and same." He brushed his wet hair away from his forehead. "I apologize that you had to see me partially in my natural form. The fire had me a bit discombobulated."

Arjuna clutched at the grass at his feet, struggling for words. Long ago he had made the decision to believe Mr. Drona when Mr. Drona had told him that asuras were not extinct and that they were still present, still hiding, still _lurking _among even the most advanced and pious human civilizations. But believing Mr. Drona's words was one thing. Actually coming face-to-face with an asura was another thing entirely. And not just any asura, but _Mayasura._ Arjuna had heard of Mayasura in stories that were hundreds of thousands of years old, and therefore the man in front of him couldn't possibly be the same Mayasura, could he?

But Mr. Drona had once said that he had met Mayasura. Mr. Drona had once told Arjuna that Mayasura was _both the most brilliant and the most inexplicably foolish asura ever born. _And Mr. Drona would never lie to Arjuna.

Now, Arjuna realized, it was finally _his _turn to meet the asura that his own teacher had once described, in one simple word, as _stupid._

"You must be a devakin," Mayasura said to Arjuna. "I can smell your deva DNA. My apologies, young man. I am well aware of the physical discomfort that devakin experience while in the presence of an asura."

Arjuna swallowed, then held up his head defiantly. "You do not make me uncomfortable," he said.

Mayasura laughed. "I appreciate your compassion, young man, but there is no need for dishonesty." Mayasura stood up slowly, and handed Krishna's jacket back to him. His own clothes appeared to be drying quickly. "You should not fear me. Unlike many of my brethren, I hold no ill will toward humans or devas. In fact," he said, holding out one hand to Arjuna, "I am rather in your debt."

Arjuna took Mayasura's hand hesitantly. He wasn't sure what he expected – a shock of electricity when he touched the asura, perhaps? But nothing happened. It was just a normal, human hand. Mayasura helped pull Arjuna into a standing position as Arjuna said, "You should thank Krishna, too."

"I don't need anything," Krishna said quickly. "Unless you can convince my mom not to ground me for life when I get back home tomorrow morning…?"

"Some tasks might be beyond even my awesome supernatural powers," Mayasura said, "but I will try."

"I don't want her to find out that I was here. Or anybody, for that matter." Krishna glanced toward Arjuna. "You won't tell anyone that I was here tonight, will you?"

Arjuna raised his eyebrows. After all of that?! "Why not?"

"It's not time yet," Krishna said, more than a bit apologetically.

Mayasura turned his gaze toward Arjuna. "And you, prince? Is there any request you wish to make of me, so that I may repay my debt to you?"

Arjuna closed his eyes and thought. Then he opened them again and said, "You're the architect who built Ravana's capital on Lanka, right?"

"Yes. And the great spacefaring cities of the ancient asuras."

Arjuna nodded to himself, slowly, then said, "My family – my brother – has no capital, at least not yet…"

* * *

V.

"Then _get_ them airborne as quickly as possible," Yudhisthira snapped into the comm, which he then handed impatiently back to the aide closest to him. "I want air surveillance in less than five minutes."

The aide turned away from Yudhisthira and repeated his order into the comm. Yudhisthira grasped a roof-mounted handlebar and pulled himself up on top of the RTV again, scanning the night landscape in front of him. Soldiers fanned out ahead of his RTV, illuminating the scrubby inland brush with their high-beam flashsticks, calling out his brother's name over and over again. The RTVs rolling behind them similarly shined their headlights over the landscape, occasionally illuminating another fallen chunk of flesh that was busily bubbling and melting, but nothing, thankfully, that looked like the remains of a human being.

Yudhisthira ducked back down into the RTV again, and shrugged off his jacket, wiping a line of sweat away from his forehead. "It's getting hot," he told his driver.

"The forest should be just around this next bend, Your Majesty."

Yudhisthira clutched his jacket in his hands. "We should have seen him by now," he muttered. "He would have _found _us by now. I mean, there's no way he could have been caught _in_ the fire--"

"His Highness could have escaped the forest on the opposite side, farther inland," the driver added. He squinted, frowning at something he could see through the front of the vehicle. "Here it is," he mumbled under his breath.

Yudhisthira climbed out the top of the RTV again, and immediately had to shield his face from the blast of heat and light that greeted him. The forest fire roared directly ahead of him, pouring smoke into the clear night sky. The storm clouds that had been gathering earlier that night were long gone, now replaced with black clouds of smoke.

The line of soldiers formerly in front of the RTVs began falling back. The RTVs slowed and grounded to a halt. Yudhisthira climbed completely up and out of his, scrambling down a ladder on its side. He jumped to the ground and ran forward, heedless of the shouts of his aides and bodyguards and soldiers and whoever else was yelling at him. "ARJUNA!" he screamed, cupping his hands and running toward the fire. "_ARJUNA!!"_

His guards grabbed him by the shoulders, and by his arms, pulling him back, nearly throwing him to the ground. "Let go of me," he shouted at them, "_Don't touch me!_"

"Your Majesty--"

"My _brother_ went in there!" Yudhisthira cried out, his voice breaking.

"We will have airborne surveillance in less than one minute--"

"Your brother may be on the other side of the fire--"

Yudhisthira finally ceased struggling, and his guards gingerly let him go. He stood up straight, slowly, and stared at the wall of orange and red flame roaring in front of him. "This can't be happening," he muttered to himself.

"Satellite reports are in," another aide suddenly said, cupping his hand to listen to the comm resting in his ear. "Surveillance and weather satellites reported the formation of a storm cell in this area, but it broke up after producing quite a bit of lightning. Other than that, nothing unusual detected."

"Right," Yudhisthira said. "Nothing to explain why the sky would suddenly start raining body-parts." _Or how an old-growth forest could suddenly burst into flame in the middle of such a cold night._

"Your Majesty," somebody was saying to him, "Your Majesty, come, this way, we can travel the perimeter of the fire in these vehicles."

Yudhisthira listlessly let himself be led back to a parked and idling RTV. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the light of the forest fire, but he could see the flames from behind his eyelids. Something supernatural was happening on this island, of that there was no doubt. And Yudhisthira's little brother had been caught up in the middle of it. But Mr. Dhaumya had been unable to say whether demons or gods or something in between was responsible.

_Please, _Yudhisthira pleaded to the gods as he stepped up to climb back into his RTV, still keeping his eyes squeezed tightly shut, _Please let my brother be safe. Please let me find him. Please let me open my eyes and see him standing right in front of me—_

Over the roar of the fire, Yudhisthira could hear shouting. He turned his head, opened his eyes, and saw the soldiers standing around a second RTV behind him surging together toward a spot they were illuminating with their flashsticks. The second RTV rotated on its tires, training its bright headlights across the brush land in that direction.

_--or behind me._

Yudhisthira jumped back down off the RTV and pelted toward the light, pushing aside soldiers and bodyguards as he did so. He caught a glimpse of a small, dark figure running across the brush, heading right toward them. The last line of soldiers parted to make way for Yudhisthira, and he reached out and caught his brother in a running embrace.

"Arjuna, Arjuna, Arjuna!" Yudhisthira kissed his cheeks frantically. "I thought you were caught in the fire!"

Arjuna returned his brother's tight embrace and kisses. "You're not going to believe it," he babbled, "you're not going to believe any of it, you won't _believe _where I've been, I--" He paused, glancing around at Yudhisthira's shoulders. "You brought soldiers?"

"We were looking for you!"

"But I was fine."

"We didn't think so!"

"Where's Bhima? Where's Mother?"

"At the camp," Yudhisthira said, pulling Arjuna toward the line of waiting soldiers. "I left them there to protect everyone else. Arjuna, what in the five hells is going on here?! We thought that we were under attack!"

"Under attack? From what?"

"I don't know, but there were body parts falling from the sky!"

"Oh, yeah. All of those heads and arms and… things." Arjuna nodded. "It's all right, though. I took care of it."

"You what?"

"Listen," Arjuna said, suddenly grabbing Yudhisthira's arm and pulling him away from the soldiers. "You have to come with me, this way. There's something that you have to see that's totally amazing!"

"Arjuna, what--?!"

"It's kind of hard to explain, but there was this cow and it led me and this farmer boy into the woods and Agni was there and he told us that he needed to burn the forest but we had to stop Indra first so we were riding in the sky on the back of his enchanted ram and there were like, a hundred or a thousand or a million gandharvas and, and," Arjuna babbled again, "and I met them, I met Indra and Agni and I _talked _to them and they were so _real _and then they left but then there was this asura and he looked like he was on fire so I--"

"Arjuna," Yudhisthira said, reaching out to place one hand on Arjuna's forehead. "You're feverish."

"I'm not making any of it up!" Arjuna said, still stubbornly pulling Yudhisthira away from his own entourage. "I _knew _you wouldn't believe me, that's why I have to _show _you!" He was nearly running now – and so, by default was Yudhisthira. The bodyguards and soldiers were running, too, following behind them both, but making no move to interfere. Further behind them, an RTV engine rumbled back to life. The vehicle began plodding along behind them, shining its bright beams across the night landscape unfolding in front of them.

Arjuna scrambled up and over a grassy hill, and then another one. Yudhisthira followed along, not saying anything, beginning to sense a strange electricity in the air. He still had no idea what was going on, but he squeezed Arjuna's hand tightly and decided to trust him.

"Look," Arjuna said, pulling Yudhisthira over the crest of a tall, grass-covered hill.

Yudhisthira looked. And then he promptly fell down to his knees.

On the other side of the hill it was bright, as bright as daylight. A valley lay spread out before him, illuminated by spheres of light floating in the sky, casting their glow down upon the construction projects being completed on the ground. Golden towers of a magnificent palace gleamed as they reached up toward the night sky, joined by the skeletons of half-completed towers between them. Marble brocades threaded between glittering pools and lush gardens. And everywhere there were creatures – half-man, half-bird, or half-lion, or half-something-else-entirely, human faces with inhuman teeth and fur-covered bodies and tails and feathers, crawling everywhere, walking everywhere, flying everywhere. They flew into the air, carrying materials that assembled before the eye to create more spiraling towers; they tread on the ground, digging the gardens and calling forth the trees and flowers and bushes that burst from the grounds at a beckon from their inhuman hands. Others stacked marble columns and broad staircases and sculpture-laden rooftops around the valley, assembling dozens of buildings of incomparable beauty. The inexplicable spheres of light floated wherever they were needed, following the busy creatures from one end of the valley to the other as they conjured, hammered, sculpted, polished, and refined the city they were constructing.

"It's for you," Arjuna said, kneeling down beside Yudhisthira. "It's your capital."

Yudhisthira's mouth worked for a moment, unable to produce any sound. Then he managed to croak, "What are those _things_?"

"The workers? They're gandharvas. But not the ones that serve Indra. These ones are different."

"These are my personal crew," an unassuming man wearing commoner's traveling clothes said, stepping toward Yudhisthira. The man bowed low and said, "Greetings, Your Majesty. I trust that the city is to your liking?"

Yudhisthira managed to stand up, shakily, and stare down at the man. He took a moment to notice the way that the soldiers who had been following him were now staring, awestruck, down at the valley. Then he refocused his attention on the man in front of him. "Who are you?" Yudhisthira demanded, trying his best to sound imperious, rather than dumbfounded.

"Mayasura."

Yudhisthira glared at him. "No, truly."

"For real. He's real," Arjuna said quickly, reaching out to grab Yudhisthira's hand. "He's a real asura. Come on, touch him."

Yudhisthira gingerly let Arjuna guide his hand toward the stranger's outstretched hand. The stranger was standing straight and tall, not even bothering to kneel – or at least bow his head, not even that much – in front of Yudhisthira. Yudhisthira's fingers brushed against the other man's for a moment, then he abruptly had to pull his hand back, sucking in his breath. He could feel the truth of Arjuna's words, burning in the markings on his back and neck. It didn't matter that Yudhisthira had never touched or felt or seen a genuine asura before. In his god's blood, he knew.

"I realize that locating your capital in a valley rather than on top of a higher elevation would be untraditional," Mayasura went on casually, addressing Yudhisthira as an equal. "But I thought that it rather suited you as my client, if you don't mind my presumption."

Yudhisthira nodded slowly. "Yes," he said, licking his lips. "Ah, er, yes. I suppose."

"The Dharmaraj ought to be down among the people, no, even _below_ the people, always acting as their servant," Mayasura went on, indicating the city unfolding below them with a sweep of his hand. "Come with me, please. I would like you to inspect our projects. My workers and I wish only to build to your specifications."

"Right," Yudhisthira said, following Mayasura as he began to walk down toward the city, motioning for his soldiers to follow. "There should be a library," he suddenly found himself saying, "in the most accessible place."

"There will be one in the center of the city."

"I want the royal gardens open to the public."

"It shall be so. How would you like the library stocked? My gandharvas keep borrowing books from the libraries in Heaven, I'm simply dying to get rid of them."

"Er…"

"If you humans can read them, that is. The courthouse will be over there," Mayasura said, pointing to an unfinished structure. "Would you fancy a museum here or there?"

"A museum of what?"

"I can have my servants fetch the greatest works of art from among every inhabited human planet within a fortnight."

"Oh," Yudhisthira said in a small voice. "We, ah, we also brought a few pieces from Hastinapura--"

Mayasura suddenly clapped his hands. "Animal skeletons! Especially the extinct ones. I'm not sure why but you humans seem to adore those awful things. Shall I find some of those, too?" He began tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Shall they go in the same museum as the artwork…?"

"Sure," Yudhisthira said numbly. "Why not?" A pair of lion-headed gandharvas flew past him, their wings flapping cool night air into his face, a sphere of light bobbing lazily in their trail.

"And the parliament buildings, and the records archive, and military headquarters, and some way to make the valley accessible by road and by air…" Mayasura ticked off his mental notes on his fingers. "Is there anything else that Your Majesty feels that he needs?"

Yudhisthira stood for a moment, gazing at the wondrous sight in the valley down below him. Finally, he said, "Yes. There is one more thing."

* * *

To be continued.


	17. Interlude: Kritavarma

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: KRITAVARMA

* * *

The high tide was the most dangerous time. The higher the water was, the closer to land the large, toothy fish could approach.

"We have defenses mounted on the cliff there and there," Kritavarma said, pointing along the edge of the cliff upon which stood his village, "and all around the wharf. If anyone ever falls into the water, the Lord forbid, the guns can hopefully take out whatever approaches them, giving us enough time to get them out." Kritavarma waved briefly to someone he spotted on the distant wharf. "Those guns have saved lives before. We hate to use them. There's always a risk you'll hit some_body _instead of some_thing_ with fins. But what else can we do?"

Yudhisthira nodded at this, thoughtfully. The deck beneath him rocked and heaved as their boat putted along across the bay in front of the cliffs. An attendant hovered at Yudhisthira's shoulder, holding his comm unit and a thermos of lickfire at the ready. A few more of his bodyguards were positioned around the deck of the boat, trying not to get in the way of the men reeling up the fishing nets trailing through the water beside them. Yudhisthira turned toward Kritavarma and asked, "Are the nets dangerous?"

"No. We sometimes get the dangerous ones caught _in _the nets, but that's why we haul the nets out and hang them in the air before opening them. To make sure that there's nothing left alive in them when we do open them." Kritavarma walked across the deck to the other side of the boat, and tapped a suspension cable supporting the nets below them. "All of our roping is actually woven of a mesh of metal fibers," he said. "Not even the toothy ones can cut their way free."

Yudhisthira took off his gloves and reached out to touch the cable. "That's extraordinary," he said.

Kritavarma seemed to eye him for a moment, then turned away. "This way, please, Your Majesty," he said, leading Yudhisthira down into the ship's cabin.

Yudhisthira and his attendant followed. Kritavarma was a huge man, broad-shouldered and thick-bearded, the type of person who could manage to look intimidating even standing next to Bhima. His voice was quiet and soft-spoken, but there was a hardened, just-short-of-grizzled edge beneath it. In his official capacity, he was and had nearly almost always been the royally-endorsed governor of the island of Khandava. In his unofficial capacity, however, he was an expert fisherman, large-animal veterinarian, and leader of the local militia that Yudhisthira technically wasn't supposed to know about. And whether this man decided to bow before Yudhisthira, officially or unofficially, would largely determine how pleasant his rule of Kuru's southern hemisphere would be.

Kritavarma led them to the back of the ship's cabin, where an old, sagging couch sat in front of a wall-mounted rack of liquor. Yudhisthira sat down on the couch while his attendant hovered alertly beside him. Kritavarma poured a drink and handed it to Yudhisthira, completely ignoring all of the usual politeness and formal ceremony required when a commoner offered something to a king. But Yudhisthira took his drink and swallowed it gratefully. "I find it quite unusual to have a king on board my ship," Kritavarma said, bluntly.

Yudhisthira looked taken aback. "I beg pardon?"

"I do not feel that there is a need for your personal inspection here."

"Inspection?" Yudhisthira looked stupidly confused for a moment, then he blinked, and choked back a laugh. "This isn't an inspection. I just wanted to meet--"

"Would there be another reason for a king to dirty his hands onboard a ship like this?"

"It's much cleaner than many I've been on," Yudhisthira said calmly, taking another swallow from his drink.

Kritavarma was quiet for a long moment, sizing up Yudhisthira with his eyes, trying to decide whether he believed that the king had actually spent time on filthy fisherman's ships or if he was bluffing. "If you did not come here for an inspection," Kritavarma asked, "what did you come here for?"

"To meet you," Yudhisthira answered. "And because I was curious."

"Curious?"

"About the people here. About the riggings on your ship – it's different than every one I've visited before. About the guns on the wharf."

Kritavarma slowly sipped from his drink, never taking his eyes off Yudhisthira. "You are not like other kings," he finally said.

Yudhisthira gave him a curious look.

"You are especially not at all like your father," Kritavarma added. "You are much more foolish than him."

Yudhisthira nodded at this, since he didn't see what good it would do to deny it. When he and Kritavarma emerged from the cabin and back onto the ship's deck sometime later, however, Kritavarma chose to walk one respectful step behind Yudhisthira. Just one step, but it was something. The men on deck saw and took note.

* * *

II.

Later that evening, Kritavarma had scheduled an appointment with a dairy farmer out in the countryside, on a farm nestled between the seaside cliffs and burnt-out husk of the Khandava forest. Although Kritavarma did not say as much, Yudhisthira understood that he was invited along. He had spent the day speaking with the fishermen on Kritavarma's ship. The men had at first been incredulous at the idea that a king would want to look at them, or talk to them, or listen to them. But they had quickly warmed up to the idea, and had become quite vocal and opinionated as the day had worn on.

Kritavarma almost chose to leave the foolish king behind, seeing as how said foolish king had rolled up his sleeves and was hauling up the evening nets right alongside the laughing and nearly-incredulous men on deck, but at the last minute the foolish king met Kritavarma's eyes and seemed to understand that it was time to go. He apologized to the men and bowed out, following Kritavarma to the waverunner that would take them back to shore.

The king and only one of his bodyguards climbed into the RTV that Kritavarma was driving. "The view out here is fantastic," the king said, leaning out of the RTV and watching the seaside cliffs falling behind them as they headed inland.

"It looked better before the forest burned to the ground," Kritavarma commented.

The king laughed, leaned back in his seat, and accepted a smokeroll that his bodyguard offered him. Kritavarma watched the king through his rearview window as he drove. The king was gazing out the open sides of the RTV, not bothering to shield his smokeroll from the wind, a small, faint smile on his lips. He seemed to enjoy being out in the countryside, accompanied by nobody but Kritavarma and a single bodyguard, without the dozens of attendants and armored hoverers that normally would have followed him out on an errand had he still been in Hastinapura.

Kritavarma turned the RTV off the main road and onto a dirt road, which they traveled down for a few moments before pulling to a stop some distance in front of a small farmhouse. There was a young man waiting for them out front, waving his hands to indicate a stop. Kritavarma risked another glance into the rearview mirror, and saw the king nearly fumble and drop his smokeroll when he saw the young man at the head of the drive.

"Tall, isn't he?" Kritavarma laughed.

"Good gods, he looks as big as Bhima!"

"That's just Balarama. He was practically born that tall." Kritavarma climbed out of the RTV, and the king and his silent bodyguard followed. The young man named Balarama finally saw the king and, after a moment of hesitation, as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes, decided to drop into a bow.

"There's no need for that," Yudhisthira said quickly, jogging up behind Kritavarma. Balarama didn't say anything, but straightened up just enough to give Kritavarma a searching look. Kritavarma shrugged a bit – the same shrug he would have given if a stray dog had followed him home, no point in asking questions – and Balarama straightened back up to his full height.

Balarama glanced once more at the king, mumbled a quick "Your Majesty," then turned his attention back to Kritavarma. "This way," he said, turning down another path. "Krishna's supposed to be in the pen with them, but… You know."

Kritavarma knew. At any given moment, it was ninety-five percent likely that Balarama's younger brother Krishna was nowhere near where he was _supposed_ to be or doing what he was _supposed _to be doing. Still, Kritavarma liked the kid. Everyone liked Krishna. It was kind of a strange thing, really.

But this time, surprisingly – very surprisingly – Krishna was indeed right where he was supposed to be, sitting on the fence surrounding the cattle pen, looking as if he was and had been doing nothing but waiting patiently for them to arrive. He hopped off the fence when he saw Balarama approaching him, nodded quickly to Kritavarma, and bowed low before the king. "What an unexpected honor, Your Majesty," he said, touching the king's feet.

Yudhisthira looked genuinely embarrassed. "Really, there's no need for that," he repeated. "I am just Lord Kritavarma's guest for today."

Kritavarma chuckled to himself. He had never been referred to as a Lord before. But now that Indraprastha had a king, he supposed that meant that he had some sort of official noble position.

Krishna straightened out of his bow and brushed his too-long bangs out of his eyes absent-mindedly. He looked deeply-tanned and darker than usual, as if he had been working outdoors all day. Actually working, instead of running off to fool with the girls in town or do whatever else Krishna usually did to avoid his chores. Krishna pointed to one of several indistinguishable cows milling about in the pen. "Spider is right there," he said.

Kritavarma climbed over the fence and went to examine the sitting cow that Krishna had indicated was Spider. Two sets of long, fresh scars on either side of the cow's back were the only indication that the poor creature had ever been born with vestigial legs. Spider seemed to recognize Kritavarma, and lifted his head toward him, mildly curious and sniffing with his massive bovine nostrils, hoping to catch a whiff of contraband food. Kritavarma knelt beside Spider and began examining the scars on the cow's back carefully, searching for any sign of inflammation or irregularity. It was Kritavarma who had removed the poor thing's vestigial legs two weeks previously, and it was Kritavarma who was responsible for making sure that Spider healed properly.

On the other side of the fence, Krishna was engaging the king in conversation. "I've been to the library in Indraprastha," he was gushing. "It was enormous! I took my cousin Satyaki because he needed to do a paper for school. Do you really have books written by Gandharvas? We weren't allowed to access certain rooms, so I wasn't sure."

"We have a few," Yudhisthira said, modestly. "The High Council decided that only priests should be able to see them, though. _I_ couldn't even look at them if I wanted to."

"You couldn't read a book written by a Gandharva anyway," Balarama reminded Krishna pointedly.

Krishna gave his brother a world-class pouty look. Then he turned his attention back to the king. "How is Prince Arjuna doing?" he suddenly asked. The topic seemed to drop into the conversation as if it had come out of nowhere. Kritavarma silently wondered why Krishna would ask such an odd question.

Yudhisthira gave Krishna a funny look. He also apparently thought that this was an oddly specific and nosy question. "Let me guess. You're one of his fans?" Yudhisthira asked.

Krishna laughed. "You could say that. Not like I've ever met him in person or anything," Krishna said quickly. "It's just that, you know, I think he's amazing. I heard that he fought off a whole battalion of Indra's Gandharvas and sacrificed the forest to Agni and brought in asuras to build your palace."

"That's what they said on the media console," Balarama added.

"Which is all true, of course," Yudhisthira said. "And my brother is doing fine."

Krishna looked relieved to hear this.

"I'll bring you an autograph next time," Yudhisthira said.

Krishna shook his head. "Oh no, Your Majesty. I wouldn't ask for such a thing."

"Yes he would," Balarama commented.

Krishna gave his brother another pouty look. By this time, however, Kritavarma had finished inspecting Spider's clear eyes and clean gums, so he patted the cow on the head and stood up, his back creaking. He really was getting old. He walked back over to the fence, and Balarama offered one of his huge hands to help Kritavarma up and over the fence again.

"Thank you," Kritavarma said, gratefully. Balarama was a trustworthy and serious young man. Kritavarma secretly thought that someday he would like to groom Balarama to be his successor as the official governor-cum-Lord and unofficial head fisherman, large-animal-vet, and militia leader of the island. But for the time being, Balarama was generally too busy managing his family's farm and his capricious younger brother for any sort of training. Krishna was so irresponsible that he had actually let Spider out of the pen on the night of the forest fire. Fortunately Krishna had found Spider and returned to the farm the following morning, but not before giving everyone a good scare and his brother Balarama a spike in his blood pressure. Krishna said that he had been stuck on the opposite side of the burning forest and been forced to wait out the fire all night. Which was typical Krishna – always an excuse for mysteriously vanishing for long periods of time and then turning up again right when his family had been given a good reason to think that he was dead.

"Your farm is beautiful," Yudhisthira was saying, bowing his head toward Krishna and Balarama. "Thank you for letting me see it."

"Come back anytime," Krishna was saying, waving as Kritavarma led the king and his silent bodyguard back down the path from which they had come.

Kritavarma led the king and his bodyguard back to the RTV waiting for them. "You seem pleased, Your Majesty," Kritavarma said, as Yudhisthira climbed into the back of the RTV.

Yudhisthira took his seat in the back of the RTV with just a hint of imperiousness. "This is a good place," he said, contentedly. "This is a beautiful island." He looked Kritavarma squarely in the eye. "You have good people here."

Kritavarma was not oblivious to the calculation behind this comment. The king implied that the islanders were Kritavarma's people. Kritavarma nodded his head slowly. He still thought that the king was foolish and naïve in many ways, but he did not think that Yudhisthira would make a bad ruler, either. At least he would not mind sharing authority with this seemingly simple, oddly earnest man.

"I'm not sure how much you've heard," Kritavarma said casually, sliding into the driver's seat of the RTV, "but since royal authority has been long absent from this island, we do maintain a small self-defense force, just some local men and women who volunteer their time…"

"You mean, the militia?"

"You could call it that."

"I would. Royal authority is no longer absent from this island, yet I have noticed that your group still conducts patrols and exercises around here."

Kritavarma said nothing, waiting for what the king would say next.

"My brother Bhima would like to speak to someone about that," Yudhisthira said, carefully. "He and I have no intention of disbanding any citizens' self-defense groups. We would, however, ask that you register with the office at Indraprastha, so that we may recognize you as an official military affiliation. That's necessary to allow you to handle weapons, of course. I would also request that you maintain your weapons up to standards, agree to periodic inspections, and cooperate with government authority whenever and wherever deployed."

Kritavarma mulled this offer over, stroking his graying beard. "You're quite to the point, aren't you?"

Yudhisthira gave him a disarming smile. "None of these people will listen to a word that I say without your consent, my Lord."

"I'll agree to your terms," Kritavarma said, "if you will drop this 'Lord' business."

"Absolutely."

Kritavarma glanced at the king through his rearview mirror one last time. "You really do take after your father," he finally said.

* * *

To be continued.


	18. Chapter 09: Panchala

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER NINE: PANCHALA

* * *

They hadn't even left yet, and already Arjuna's nerves were getting the better of him. "Don't pack those," he snapped, snatching some discs and a book away from a servant's hands. "I need them with me."

"Your Highness--"

"You're not," Nakula complained loudly, catching a disc that slipped out of Arjuna's arms and eyeing the label on it critically, "going to spend the entire jump studying 'conversational high-standard Panchalan', are you? Because Sahadeva and I will _die _of boredom if Bhima is the only one around to talk to."

"You might as well give up anyway," Sahadeva pointed out calmly from his perch on top of Arjuna's bed, sitting among a pile of clothes that servants were frantically folding and sorting into luggage. Nobody seemed inclined to tell Sahadeva that he was in the way, and Sahadeva did not seem inclined to move. "You know, Yudhisthira already speaks perfect high-standard Panchalan."

Arjuna felt his cheeks blushing furiously as he snatching the wayward disc back from Nakula's hand. "He does, does he?"

"Didn't you hear him talking to Drupada last time?" Nakula pushed aside a pile of clothes and sat down next to Sahadeva. "You're hopeless if you don't even know that much about your competition."

Arjuna stood in the midst of his frantically packing servants, clutching his books and discs to his chest and sulking. "It's not a competition," he mumbled. Then he added more loudly, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, right," Nakula said, leaning back on Arjuna's bed. "Because you're totally studying conversational Panchalan because you want to ask Dhristadyumna about his thoughts on water-mining regulations."

"No," Sahadeva countered, "He wants to impress Sikhandhi with his ability to say 'Hi, my name is Arjuna, I'm twenty-three years old, and my favorite sport is archery'."

"And this has absolutely nothing to do with a certain Panchalan princess."

"Oh no, nothing."

Arjuna glowered at them both. "Get off my bed," he said.

Nakula ignored him and turned to Sahadeva. "Of course," he speculated, rather loudly, "there's always the queer-for-Ashwatthama possibility--"

"OUT!" Arjuna shouted, reaching down to bodily pull Nakula off his bed and toss him in the general direction of the door. Sahadeva slid off the bed and followed behind leisurely, as the servants around them completely ignored the commotion. "Get out NOW."

Nakula stumbled toward the bedroom door, then caught his balance and grabbed at Arjuna's wrist. "Listen," he said, suddenly serious.

"I'm listening."

"Don't… Don't be stupid about this." Nakula shook his head sadly. "You're third in line for the throne. Yudhisthira is the king. Our parents want an alliance between Panchala and Kuru. The only way for that to happen is for Drupada's daughter to marry Kuru's king. To give Drupada's only daughter anybody less than the true king would be an unacceptable insult."

Arjuna breathed in and out slowly, trying to ignore the servants pretending not to eavesdrop on them as they busied themselves packing his clothing. "You've really thought this through, haven't you?"

"These days we really don't have much else to do," Sahadeva said, standing beside his brother. Then he glanced over Arjuna's shoulder at the pile of clothes on his bed and said, "You're not seriously going to wear _that _in public, are you?"

"Why?" Arjuna turned around quickly, scanning his piles of clothing. "Which one? What's wrong with it?!"

"Calm down," Nakula said, steering Arjuna back toward his bed. "Let us help you."

"Rule Number One," Sahadeva said, tossing clothes off Arjuna's bed as servants scrambled to pick them off the floor, "don't let _Mom_ pick out your clothes for you."

"Rule Number Two," Nakula added, digging through Arjuna's drawers, "don't forget your archery gloves. How else are you going to impress _her_?" Nakula pulled a pair of gloves out of a drawer and stood up triumphantly. "Honestly, you should go prepared to put on a show. I mean, it's not like you have any other impressive talents."

* * *

II.

The hangar floor was mostly reunions and hugs. "You would have thought that we hadn't seen each other for years," Nakula muttered sourly as he was forced to endure a hug from Grandpa Bhisma.

"Nonsense, we just missed you," Bhisma said, squeezing Nakula extra tightly, apparently just to feel him squirming uncomfortably. "Particularly you, Your Highness. There's been a distinct lack of explosions and laser burns without you around."

"You're really not coming?" Yudhisthira asked sadly, as Nakula managed to extract himself from Bhisma and run pelting back toward his luggage.

Bhisma shook his head. "It would be best for me not to."

"But Sikhandhi invited you."

"He invited me, but that doesn't mean that he wants me there." Bhisma shrugged the matter off. "Either way, with all of you lot gone to the wedding, somebody has to stay behind and run things."

Yudhisthira laughed nervously. "Yes," he agreed. He had left Indraprastha in the official care of Dhaumya and the highly unofficial care of Kritavarma, but many in Indraprastha had already expressed that they still felt uneasy about the fact that Yudhisthira and his entire royal family were leaving for an extended stay on Panchala.

"Give Sikhandhi my best," Bhisma said. Then he glanced around, saw Arjuna standing on top of a pile of luggage and scanning the hangar floor, and said, "Ashwatthama and his father aren't here yet. They're coming with the last party from Hastinapura."

"Understood. Thank you," Arjuna said, with a curt nod, as he hopped off the stack of luggage. Seeing no further reason to wait on the hangar floor – especially since he did not much feel like waiting for the arrival of Duryodhana and his brothers – Arjuna picked up his light travel bag, and headed toward the entrance of the large liner that would be his home for the next two days.

Arjuna bypassed the servants who attempted to take his bag from him, and found his private suite on the stately floor that he would be sharing with his brothers. He closed and locked the door to his suite, tossed his bag down on a couch, kicked off his shoes, and flopped down on top of his bed. Arjuna took a deep breath, and then sighed into his pillow. Over the past months he had finally gotten used to sleeping on his bed in Indraprastha, his bed made of maya, his bed that always felt and smelled a little bit otherworldly. Compared to that bed, this one was tame. And boring. Arjuna wondered if he would be able to sleep at all that night.

Arjuna sat up, slid off the bed, and walked back toward the couch where he had dropped his bag. He found his Panchalan discs, a player, and a pair of audiobuds. Walking back to the bed, he slipped one of the discs into his player, and nestled the audiobuds inside of his ear. He sat down cross-legged on top of the bed, and relaxed his body the way that Mr. Drona had taught him to do. Arjuna ceased thinking, and made his mind a blank. Blank, that was, except for the small amount of attention that he allowed himself to focus on the Panchalan words and phrases now being piped into his ears.

Sometime later – a long time later – Arjuna realized that there was someone on top of the bed with him.

"This doesn't seem like a very effective method of studying," Ashwatthama said, lifting an audiobud out of Arjuna's ear. "You're not even paying attention." He was kneeling on top of the bed in front of Arjuna.

Arjuna blinked once, twice, three times. "But I locked the door," he said, stupidly.

"What, you're not glad to see me?"

"I am," Arjuna said, and he grasped Ashwatthama's shoulders and pulled him into a brief embrace. "I missed you."

"We've missed you terribly," Ashwatthama said quietly, as he pulled away from Arjuna. "Hastinapura is… It's completely different, without you around."

"Why haven't you come to visit us in Indraprastha?"

"His Majesty won't grant me leave." Ashwatthama glanced away from Arjuna uncomfortably. "I've been very busy. His Majesty has assigned me all of the most important official functions since my appointment. Which is a great honor for me. And I have to be on call twenty-four hours in case a member of the royal family needs my services. With one hundred princes, that tends to happen more often than not."

Arjuna stared at Ashwatthama, watching the way that Ashwatthama fingered the golden embroidery on his collar that signified his appointment as the king's royal priest. "Are you happy?" Arjuna suddenly blurted out.

Ashwatthama seemed surprised by the question. "Yes," he said quickly. "Very. Why wouldn't I be?"

Arjuna pulled out his audiobuds and said nothing.

"Is this because you no longer have such a very high opinion of His Majesty?"

"Well," Arjuna countered, "do you?"

"There is not a soul in this world without his troubles," Ashwatthama said. "Mr. Dhaumya always told me that it was my duty to guide and serve as much as I can. I must never abandon a single soul, not even those of the wicked."

"How's Mr. Drona?" Arjuna suddenly asked, eager to change the subject.

"The same as always," Ashwatthama laughed. "With me busy and without you around, he doesn't have much to do. He's been spending more time praying and meditating and training himself than before, I think." Ashwatthama was looking away from Arjuna again. "He's very happy, to be going back to Panchala. More happy that I think I've ever seen him before. He… It will be our first time back, you know. Since."

Arjuna was silent for a moment, watching Ashwatthama carefully. Then he slid over across the bed toward Ashwatthama and said quietly, "You don't sound very happy."

Ashwatthama leaned away from Arjuna. "I'm happy for Father," he said quickly. "Isn't that enough? I don't want to spoil this for him."

"But _you _don't want to go back to Panchala."

Ashwatthama shook his head. "Promise that you won't tell Father about any of this?"

"I promise."

Ashwatthama hesitated for another moment, watching Arjuna carefully, as if determining whether he could trust that promise or not. Then he pulled his knees up to his chest and said, "No, I'd rather not go back. I have nothing but bad memories of Panchala. But for Father, it's different. Panchala is where all of his good memories are. And… It's just that I'd rather not spend so much time around Drupada," Ashwatthama said.

"You don't seem to like Drupada much," Arjuna said, sliding of the bed and standing up slowly, stretching his stiff legs and arms.

Ashwatthama also unfolded himself and slid off the bed. "Whatever gave you that impression?"

"Was that _sarcasm_ that I just heard?"

Ashwatthama clapped a hand over his mouth. "You're a bad influence on me."

"Yeah, well… I thought that you weren't supposed to judge people. That's what you just said, right?"

Ashwatthama nodded slowly. Then he said, thoughtfully, "In a way, I should be grateful to Drupada, I suppose. If it hadn't been for him – if Father and Mother and I hadn't left – then I would never have become your friend. Not that we wouldn't have met, Arjuna. But we would have surely met as enemies. I think," he said, quietly fingering the gold braid on his collar again. "Yes. In another world, you and I might have been enemies."

"…I don't follow."

"Mmmm." Ashwatthama reached out and picked up the disc player that Arjuna had left on top of the bed. He turned it over in his hands, thoughtfully, then looked up at Arjuna. "Let's say this. If Drupada had had his way, you wouldn't need to be studying High Panchalan right now. Because you would have grown up speaking it."

* * *

III.

There were two days on board the ship, which meant two awkward dinners in which the entire extended royal family gathered together and pointedly did not compare notes. Even Durmukha, whom Arjuna could not remember having ever felt uncomfortable around, seemed to be avoiding him. Only Duryodhana and Yudhisthira seemed able to speak to one another at all.

Not that Arjuna didn't do his own fair share of avoiding. "I don't see why _he _had to come along," Arjuna grumped on the third morning, leaning over a balcony railing and watching Karna swim laps in the pool down below.

"He came because Duryodhana invited him," Drona said, frowning down at Arjuna. "Now it is your choice: either swim laps, or run laps. And do not tell me you refuse to swim just because _he _isdown there."

"I'd rather go back to bed."

"You have gotten lazy without me around," Drona sighed. Then he pinched at Arjuna's bicep. "And you are putting on the wrong kind of weight, young man."

"Now I _really _want to go back to bed."

Fortunately, by that time, landfall was merely hours away.

The first glimpse that Arjuna saw of Panchala, upon emerging from the ship's boarding dock later that day, was completely different from what he remembered.

"Well, of course it is," Nakula said, when Arjuna commented on this. "You were on a commercial flight last time, remember? Not," he said, sweeping his arm to indicate the rolled carpets, smartly lined up military personnel, bowing courtiers, and saluting soldiers, "in a royal hangar like this."

"Mmm." Arjuna glanced down the landing ramp, where Duryodhana and Yudhisthira were standing at the bottom, formally bowing to Drupada. He tried not to wince as flashbulbs went off on either side of him.

"Stop frowning," Nakula hissed out of the side of his mouth, casually turning toward the general direction of the cameras and pretending to look at something on the other side of the hangar. "Try to look happy. Why wouldn't you be happy? You should be happy."

"It's because Draupadi isn't down on the hangar floor," Sahadeva offered helpfully. "Which seems awfully rude of her, actually. Dhristadyumna is here."

Arjuna tried not to twitch.

And he was doing a fairly good job of not twitching, too, until the guests from Kuru were escorted back to Drupada's palace and shown their rooms. An entire wing of the palace had been reserved for Kuru's kings and princes.

Arjuna's servants had barely begun to unpack his bags when Nakula and Sahadeva showed up in his room. Nakula grabbed at Arjuna's shoulder and said, "Come with us!"

"Where are you going?"

"Back to the 'port. Uncle Shalya's ship is landing this evening. We got permission to join the greeting party."

"Why me?" Arjuna asked, even as Nakula was already successfully dragging him out of his room. He didn't want to say that Shalya didn't seem to much like him, but it was true, Shalya had never seemed to much like Arjuna.

"Because Draupadi will be there this time," Sahadeva added. And then Arjuna went.

* * *

IV.

The hangar floor was crowded with elaborately uniformed soldiers, and somewhat less conspicuously uniformed bodyguards. Drupada had allowed Nakula and Sahadeva to stand at the front of his greeting party, but Drupada's bodyguards had relegated Arjuna to the third row of the party.

Next to Draupadi.

Arjuna coughed, and Draupadi turned toward him. She was wearing a long, flowing formal wrap. "Yes?"

"Um… Your Highness…"

"_Yes?_" She sounded impatient and distracted. She seemed to be wearing more makeup than Arjuna remembered from their last meeting.

"You didn't come to greet us when we landed this morning," Arjuna finally said.

She looked away from him. "I am sorry about that," she said. "I had an important meeting with my priest. It had to be at noon. It was kind of a… Kind of a divining thing."

"About your future?"

"You could say that." She glanced toward the front of the greeting party, her gaze lingering on the back of Sahadeva's head. "Your Highness, how old are your brothers?"

"Who, those two? They're nineteen."

"Oh."

"Why do you ask?"

"I think they're good-looking. That is all." She frowned to herself. "I don't suppose that either of them has much experience with antique archery equipment. Do they?"

"Um, what?"

"Nothing. Just thinking out loud." She glanced up toward the ship in front of them, which had landed some time ago, but was just now powering down and preparing to open its boarding doors. "Here they come," she said.

Arjuna watched as elaborately robed guards, priests, and soldiers began filing out of the ship toward them. Shalya came striding out, glittering in his royal finery. He was followed a step behind by a young man wearing slightly less gold and jewelry, and then more guards and soldiers.

"Uncle Shalya!"

Shalya's leading procession parted to make way for Nakula as he charged up the boarding ramp, Sahadeva a step behind. Beaming, Shalya caught Nakula and pulled him into a deep hug. The press gathered around the hangar floor flashed their cameras in simultaneous explosions of blinding light.

Draupadi clicked her tongue in disapproval. "Your brothers are too old to be acting like that."

Arjuna watched the young man a step behind Shalya. He had a slight bearing and a serious face, his unremarkable brown eyes flat and unreadable as he watched Shalya embrace both of his nephews in turn. Not only were his formal robes identical to Shalya's, but his hairstyle and golden headpiece were identical, too. "Who's that with Lord Shalya?" Arjuna finally asked Draupadi.

Draupadi looked taken aback by the question. "Don't you watch the news?"

"Yes I do," Arjuna lied, defensively.

"That's Rukmaratha. Lord Shalya adopted him as his heir last year."

Arjuna glanced back up toward the landing ramp. Shalya was walking down toward Drupada, one arm slung casually around Nakula's shoulders. Sahadeva was chatting enthusiastically with Rukmaratha, although Rukmaratha had a slightly baffled look on his face. Arjuna couldn't hear what was being said, but he could well guess that anybody forced to listen to Sahadeva's incoherent one-sided conversations for the first time would look similarly baffled.

Drupada finally stepped forward, and he and Shalya exchanged bows. Shalya was led through the greeting party, bowing in turn to Sikhandhi, Dhristadyumna , and Draupadi. He bowed slightly less low in front of Arjuna than he had in front of Drupada's family. "Prince Arjuna," he said.

Arjuna returned the bow.

"I would like you to meet my son," Shalya said, nudging Rukmaratha forward. Rukmaratha bowed stiffly and said, "Pleased to meet you, Your Highness."

"Likewise." Arjuna grasped Rukmaratha's hand. It felt cold, and slightly sweaty. "I would love to introduce you to my other brothers--"

"Tonight, tonight," Shalya laughed, pulling Arjuna's hand off Rukmaratha's. "There will be time at the banquet tonight." He reached out and ruffled Nakula's fiery red hair. "I'll see you two later."

As Shalya, Rukmaratha, and their party were escorted away, Nakula turned to Sahadeva and said, "So?"

"So?" Sahadeva repeated.

"Prince Rukmaratha. Verdict?"

"He's okay," Sahadeva replied, noncommittally.

"He seemed nervous," Arjuna added. "When I touched his hand. I could feel it."

"Of course he would be nervous," Draupadi sighed, "meeting the true heir of Madra for the first time."

"Hey," Nakula said, suddenly, rather loudly. "I'm _not. _How many times do I have to say that I'm not?"

"That's still not what the talking heads on Madra think," Draupadi said. When she noticed the confused look on Arjuna's face, she sighed and asked again, "Don't you watch the news _at all_?"

* * *

V.

"It was a _thing_," Nakula said, when Arjuna asked him about it later. "It was just a big stupid _thing_. And it happened last year, so there's no point in bringing it up again now."

"What thing?" Arjuna asked, insistently.

Nakula rolled his eyes. "Uncle Shalya announced that he had adopted an heir from out of some high-ranked ambassador's family. And the media got all upset, because the purist faction wanted someone from the Madra bloodline to be the next in line for the throne. The only thing is, after Shalya, the only two left in the royal bloodline are me and Sahadeva. But I don't want to be the king of Madra. Neither does Sahadeva. So that's that." He poured Arjuna another drink. "Some people are still angry about it, though. I feel sorry for that Rukmiri."

"Rukmaratha."

"Whatever."

Arjuna accepted the drink from Nakula's hand. "So wait a minute… You _don't _want to be the king of Madra?"

"Nah. Who would _want _to be a king?" Nakula flopped down on top of his bed, somehow – amazingly – managing not to spill his own drink. "I like Indraprastha. There's not that many people to rule, so it's _easy_, you know? And Yudhisthira and Bhima do all the work anyway, so I can do whatever I want. And – and there's snow. There's actually snow in the winter. Do you know what the climate is like Sagala? It's crap."

"But you never thought about it?" Arjuna asked. "Not once?"

Nakula sat up and shook his head. "Besides," he said, "it's not like Uncle Shalya ever offered it to me, or anything."

* * *

VI.

There were days of endless ceremonies and dinner parties, and Arjuna never saw Draupadi save for at the opposite end of a banquet hall or temple.

"Wedding in two days," Nakula finally said one evening, having invaded Arjuna's quarters and currently working on stripping Arjuna's media console for spare parts. Arjuna did not want to know what the parts were going to be used for. "What are you going to do? At this rate, you'll never be able to impress her with your ability to say 'I enjoy eating breakfast' in Panchalan."

"She's busy," Arjuna said, scratching at his ear absently. "Did you get permission to--?"

"To what?" Nakula asked, delicately unspooling wire from the gutted back of the media console. "What, it's not like you ever use this thing. You don't watch the news."

"But it's not mine, and we're guests here--"

"This will do, too," Sahadeva suddenly said, holding up what looked like an antique lamp. Arjuna hadn't even noticed him entering the room. "Can we have this too?"

"It's not mine to give you--"

Sahadeva unplugged the lamp and sat down on the floor, busily unscrewing its constituent parts.

"What are you working on?" Arjuna finally asked, resigned.

"Right now, the answer is you," Nakula answered. He waved a length of wire in Arjuna's general direction. "If you don't do something to get Draupadi's attention soon, then this entire trip will be wasted."

"But--"

"That Karna," Sahadeva suddenly said. "He goes out to the sports field every morning to practice archery. The other princes and princesses go with him. They all watch him. All of the palace girls watch him. I watched him too." Sahadeva paused. "He was good. I think I'll watch him again."

Arjuna felt his shoulders stiffen. "Did you see Draupadi down there?"

"This morning. Yes."

"A-_ha_," Nakula said.

* * *

VII.

It was still dark outside when Arjuna wandered down to the outdoor archery range the following morning.

"Are you sure that you don't need any light?" Sahadeva asked, waving an unused flashstick at Arjuna.

"No." He narrowed his eyes. "I can see fine in the dark."

Nakula stumbled over a clod of dirt and swore colorfully. "Says you."

Arjuna took his place at one end of the range, as Nakula sat down his bag and pulled out the first set of drones. Sahadeva hovered over Nakula's shoulder, shining a flashstick down into the bag. "Save the hard ones for later," he whispered, loudly.

"Wait a minute," Arjuna called over to them, "what do you mean 'hard ones'?"

"The ones with defensive capabilities," Nakula answered, as he switched on a handful of drones and released them into the sky. "Don't worry! Nothing that you can't handle."

Arjuna's bow winked in and out of his hands, and the drones that Nakula had just released plummeted to the ground, cut cleanly in two.

"Or maybe we'll just start with the hard ones," Nakula muttered.

By the time that Arjuna had finished off nearly one quarter of Nakula's drones, the sun was barely beginning to peek over the horizon. And that was when Karna came.

"What are you doing?" he asked, striding down toward the range, flanked by Durmukha, Yuyutsu, Uluka, and a pair of young princes from Abhira whose names Arjuna could not remember. A large group of girls from Drupada's palace and from the visiting parties – servants, soldiers, bodyguards, and handmaidens – followed a discrete distance behind, watching the brewing confrontation with hungry eyes.

"Practicing," Arjuna answered. He turned away from Karna, drew his bow, and took aim at the lone drone that Nakula has just released into the sky. "His Majesty Drupada said that any of his guests were welcome to use these facilities."

"I see." Karna shrugged. "Well, do whatever." He took his place beside Arjuna.

Arjuna paused, his bowstring still pulled taught. "Are you going to shoot too?"

"Yes." Karna folded his hands, closed his eyes, and bowed toward the rising sun. "After prayer."

"Fine. You do that." Arjuna snapped Gandiva's bowstring and sent his arrow flying.

The drone zipping around the sky in front of them exploded apart in a burst of white flame. And Arjuna's arrow went sailing, untouched and unscathed, through the cloud of smoke and falling sparks of electricity left in the drone's place.

Karna lowered his bow as Arjuna turned and glared at him. "Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to aim for _your _target. My mistake." He beckoned to Uluka. "This morning I promised to tutor Uluka with his shooting, right?"

Uluka clutched the antique bow that he had dragged onto the field with him nervously. "Right. But…" The two Abhiran princes, both appearing somewhat younger than Uluka, clustered behind him and whispered to each other nervously in an alien language.

"Will it be too distracting?" Yuyutsu asked, kindly, placing a hand on Uluka's shoulder. "If Arjuna's drones are too distracting, then we can leave."

"I don't see why we should have to leave," Karna said, rather loudly. "We've been using this field at the same time every day for the past week." He glared at Arjuna. "And I made a promise to Uluka and to Uluka's father."

"Just because you keep using this place," Nakula suddenly shouted, "doesn't make it _yours_."

"No," Durmukha conceded, "but it means that you knew that we would be here, Your Highnesses." He frowned disapprovingly at Arjuna. "And it means that you chose this time for a reason, instead of coming earlier or later." He looked Arjuna directly in his eyes. "Well, Your Highness? What is your reason?"

Arjuna clenched his hands tightly around Gandiva. He glanced around the shooting range, first at Karna, who looked impatient; Uluka and Yuyutsu, who were watching him nervously; Durmukha, whose eyes showed none of the kindness that Arjuna remembered from his younger years in Hastinapura; at Nakula, whose strange eyes were reflecting the burning anger of the rising sun; and at Sahadeva, who was sitting and plucking at the grass on the ground, suddenly completely oblivious to everything going on around him.

"I wanted to test myself," Arjuna finally answered, "against the great Karna."

Karna raised one eyebrow while the watching gallery, predictably, let out a collective gasp. Then, slowly, Karna began to grin. It was not a pleasant grin. "It would be rude of me to refuse you challenge, _Your Highness._ Previous promises notwithstanding."

"It's okay," Uluka suddenly said, nodding up at Karna. "My father always taught me to never refuse a challenge. You shouldn't either."

"Thank you," Karna said, bowing his head slightly to Uluka. Uluka and the others stepped back, leaving Arjuna and Karna standing alone at the end of the range. "We'll use your drones," Karna said, mounting a sizzling arrow on his bow.

"Fine by me," Arjuna said, drawing back his own bow.

Without a word of warning, Nakula launched another drone. It whirled through the air for less than half a second before two arrows – one white-hot flame, the other liquid lightning – hurtled toward it. The drone exploded in a burst of flashing electricity, and the fiery arrow went sailing, untouched, through the air.

Arjuna beamed as the audience behind him burst into applause. But suddenly there were two more drones in the air, and another arrow of white-hot fire already streaking toward them. Arjuna fired his own arrows, but he was too slow.

"Don't let your guard down," Karna advised jovially, as he mounted another arrow and more drones zipped across the range in front of them.

The contest went on for what felt like ages. Arrows whipped through the sky and drone after drone met a grisly airborne demise. The watching audience clapped, and cheered, and steadily grew, as more and more palace personnel heard the commotion and came to watch. By the time that the sun had well risen into the sky, the ground around the archery range was choked with eagerly watching bystanders. And still the drones flew and the arrows flashed, until a loud voice from behind the crowd suddenly said, "Oh, come _on._"

For a moment, the crowd fell silent. For a moment, both Karna and Arjuna paused, turning their heads toward the sound of the voice.

It was Draupadi, standing on a hill overlooking the archery range, a pair of handmaidens and bodyguards on either side of her. "Aren't you _finished _yet?" she shouted down at them, tapping her foot impatiently, a deep frown wrinkling her face.

Arjuna was confused by the question. He glanced around, baffled. Nakula still had drones in his hands and Karna still seemed ready to shoot, so--

"Not yet!" Arjuna shouted back up at her.

Draupadi threw up her hands. "Why don't you just save yourselves the trouble and whip out your dicks right now to compare?!" she shouted. Then she whirled around and stomped off angrily, her entourage scurrying to follow.

The watching crowd was deadly silent. Karna stared up at the spot where Draupadi had been standing, his mouth a perfect O of surprise. And Nakula tossed an unused drone up and down in his hand and commented loudly, "You know, that Princess Draupadi _is _kind of hot."

* * *

VIII.

Arjuna had planned on sulking all day in his room with his tail between his legs, but he was less than surprised when it turned out that nobody would let him.

"What did you think you were _doing_?!" Yudhisthira asked, shaking Arjuna's shoulders. "We're not here to start fights. We're here to be _diplomatic_. Why did you think that it would be a good idea to challenge Karna?!"

"It was Nakula's idea," Arjuna mumbled. "And kind of Sahadeva's."

"I know. I know!" Yudhisthira let go of Arjuna's shoulders and paced back and forth, frowning. "Grandpa Bhisma's dealing with them right now--" Yudhisthira paused when he saw the look on Arjuna's face. "That's right. You're the lucky one."

"I--"

"WHAT did you think you were doing?!" Bhima suddenly asked, stomping in behind Yudhisthira. "How could you be so stupid?!"

Arjuna refrained from commenting on the irony of being chastised by Bhima about this. He started again, "I--"

"What did you think you were DOING?!" Arjuna's mother asked, as Bhima moved aside to let her into the room. "Arjuna, what would your father think?"

"I--"

"What in the five hells--" Drona shouted, pushing his way past Bhima, which appeared to not be a terribly easy task, "has gotten into you?!"

Arjuna flopped down into a chair and rubbed at his forehead. "Does anyone else have something that they want to say to me?" he grumbled.

"_Yes_," Bhisma said, his white beard and icy eyes suddenly looming over Arjuna. Arjuna felt himself shrink down into his seat.

"I thought that you were taking care of the brats," Bhima said.

Bhisma straightened up slowly. "An old man like me has not much taste for an exercise in futility." He turned his attention back toward Arjuna. "I hope you realize that the royalty from over fifty planets gathered here is currently gossiping about one topic and one topic only, and that is how a pair of idiot Kuru princes were humiliated by Princess Draupadi this morning."

"Karna's not a prince," Arjuna said through gritted teeth.

"You've brought shame to our entire family," Bhisma hissed, "and likely made us all the butt of jokes for years to come."

"A _hilarious _joke," Nakula offered brightly, dragging Sahadeva into the crowded room. When he saw the glares being directed at him, he shrugged. "What, am I the only person who thinks that what Draupadi said was absolutely hilarious? And you should have _seen _the look on that Karna's face. It was so worth it."

Bhisma crossed his arms over his chest. "Was it really 'worth it'?"

"Yes," Sahadeva answered.

Bhisma shook his head. "Why do I even bother asking?" he mumbled.

"Arjuna," Drona said solemnly, stepping in front of him, "do you understand what you have done? Besides shaming and humiliating your family," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Your real sin was--"

"Yeah yeah yeah." Arjuna sulked in his chair. "I wasted my arrows for a frivolous purpose."

"And that has _consequences,_" Drona suddenly exploded, angrily, "Serious consequences! That bow is a part of you, and using it means losing a part of yourself with each arrow that you waste!" He hissed through his teeth. "Although I can see now that you do not – or choose not to – understand that at all."

Arjuna sank lower in his chair, glaring up at his teacher. "Why don't you go yell at Karna?" he snapped. "This is his fault too. And you're in _his _court now."

"_I _belong to no king's court," Drona said, "And I am still yourteacher."

"No you're not," Arjuna mumbled beneath his breath.

"What was that?"

"I said…" Arjuna straightened up in his chair slowly. "No, you're not. You stayed in Hastinapura even though you could have--"

"_Arjuna_," Bhisma said, sharply.

But Arjuna ignored him. "I never see you," Arjuna said to Drona, calm but with his voice slowly growing louder, "I never speak to you, I never hear of you, I never hear _from_ you. You're not my teacher anymore."

"Arjuna," his mother said, "Don't be so disrespectful. You don't know--"

"What? What?!" Arjuna suddenly stood up and threw out his hands. "I don't know what?! Why are you taking his side? None of you," Arjuna said, sweeping his hand to indicate his brothers and mother and Bhisma, "none of you ever even liked him. I don't know why, nobody tells me anything, but even_ I_ know that much!"

Kunti was shaking her head. "Arjuna, you don't--"

"I--"

"Stop interrupting your mother," Bhima growled.

"Stop interrupting _me_!" Arjuna countered.

"You're acting childish--"

"Oh, give him a break," Nakula suddenly said, loudly. "He's allowed to act stupid. He's in looooove."

The room fell silent.

"Oh, come on," Nakula snapped, impatiently. "It's not like everyone here didn't already know."

Arjuna looked around the room, and suddenly realized that everyone was unable to meet his eyes. Everyone, that is, except for Drona, who stood watching him quietly, his face a careful blank, his eyes cold.

"Well," Yudhisthira suddenly coughed. "Well. Arjuna, I hope that you take some time to reflect on what you've done. You two," he said, turning to Nakula and Sahadeva, "as well."

"Yeah yeah yeah. Reflect. Sure."

"Come," Kunti said, already steering the twins out of the room. "Drupada's head of staff would like to have a word with you two about some of the hardware that has recently gone missing from the guest quarters." Bhisma followed them out.

Finally Bhima turned to Arjuna and asked, "Is that true?"

"Is what true?" Arjuna asked, back to sulking.

"That you fancy Draupadi."

Arjuna didn't answer.

"You know…" Bhima was speaking slowly, carefully. "You know… She's Drupada's only daughter, which means that she has to marry--"

"That's enough, Bhima," Yudhisthira said, quietly. Bhima fell silent.

"What does it matter?" Arjuna turned away from his brothers. "She hates me now, anyway." He turned toward Drona and snapped, impatiently, "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"

Drona narrowed his eyes. "Why would Your Highness care what I think?" He turned around and walked slowly out of the room. "After all, I am no longer Your Highness's teacher."

Arjuna waited until Drona had left, then flopped back down into his chair again.

"Arjuna--" Bhima started, but cut himself off when Yudhisthira placed a hand on his arm. "That's enough," Yudhisthira repeated. "Arjuna has punished himself enough already."

"No, he hasn't," Bhima countered. He glared at Arjuna. "Are you stupid? It's Duryodhana's fault that Drona has to stay in Hastinapura. You should blame _him_."

"Bhima, don't start this again," Yudhisthira pleaded.

"And if you fire Drona like that," Bhima continued, "then you're playing right into Duryodhana's hands."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Yudhisthira challenged. "Duryodhana's not our enemy."

"Yes he is. Can't you see? He's plotting against you. And scheming. Plotting _and _scheming."

"Bhima, those are synonyms."

"Yeah. And yesterday, when Duryodhana was describing Indraprastha's fishing industry to Drupada as if it belonged to him, and right in front of you no less, was _that_ a synonym too?"

"You're not using that word correctly."

"The point," Bhima said, turning back to Arjuna, "is that you should apologize to your teacher."

"Agreed," Yudhisthira added, unhelpfully.

Arjuna rolled his head away from them, sinking even further down into his chair. "Later," he said, noncommittally.

"Today would be ideal," Yudhisthira pressed. "It already seems as if there will be enough awkwardness at tonight's dinner as it is." He took a step closer to Arjuna. "May I ask you to make a promise to me?"

"I promise to apologize today," Arjuna mumbled.

"Not that, but your promise is duly noted." Yudhisthira knelt down beside Arjuna and grasped his hand. "I want you to promise me that you won't challenge Karna anymore."

Arjuna sat up abruptly, pulling his hand away from Yudhisthira's. "Why not?!"

"Because when you're around him…" Yudhisthira paused, and then stood up slowly. "He brings out all of the ugliness in you."

* * *

IX.

Duryodhana found Yudhisthira and Bhima just as the two of them were exiting Arjuna's quarters. "Did you talk to Arjuna?" Duryodhana demanded to know.

"We've already taken care of it," Bhima answered, stiffly, as he moved himself to stand between the door and Duryodhana. "Have you taken care of your part of the problem?"

Duryodhana felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. "What--?"

But suddenly Yudhisthira was between the two of them, one hand on Duryodhana's shoulder, gently steering him away from Bhima. For the moment, Duryodhana allowed himself to be steered. "How is Karna?" Yudhisthira asked.

"Livid. Ashwatthama is trying to get him to calm down." Duryodhana frowned at nothing in particular. He could _use _Karna's temper and his tendency to hold epic grudges. Possibly. Someday. He just wasn't sure how yet. "Karna doesn't seem to take to public insults well."

"Does anyone?" Yudhisthira was still leading Duryodhana down the hallway. Bhima was gone.

"We're laughingstocks, now," Duryodhana fumed. "All of us."

"It's not so bad," Yudhisthira said. Duryodhana knew that from Yudhisthira's point of view, this was not a polite lie, as Yudhisthira was incapable of polite lies. But Duryodhana knew that Yudhisthira was also capable of being astoundingly dense. "I don't think that one rude comment from a Panchalan princess is going to do much to discourage Arjuna's legions of fans."

"Speaking of the princess," Duryodhana mumbled, "have you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Yuyutsu got a tip-off from the palace servants this morning. A shipment of flowers came in today, but they weren't just wedding flowers." Duryodhana paused for dramatic effect. "There were floral arrangements for a groom-choosing ceremony hidden in the shipment."

Duryodhana felt a small thrill of satisfaction when Yudhisthira's step momentarily faltered. Then Yudhisthira gathered himself and said carefully, "Well, that makes sense. If all of the eligible royalty from fifty planets are already gathered here for a wedding anyway… That makes sense."

"Efficiency," Duryodhana nodded emphatically. "Now you're thinking like a king." He watched Yudhisthira carefully. "If Drupada does decide to pull off Draupadi's groom-choosing… What are you going to do?"

Yudhisthira stumbled slightly, again.

"I'm going to offer my hand to her," Duryodhana said, bluntly. "You should too." He watched Yudhisthira's careful non-reaction. "You and I, we should be worrying about forming an alliance with Panchala as soon as we can. Before they invade us again, you understand. Now that they've demonstrated that they can. Specifically, that _she _can."

Yudhisthira frowned slightly. "That sounds awfully…"

"Calculating?"

Yudhisthira scratched at his nose. "Do you love her?" he asked.

"I'd say I fancy her. Tendencies to make rude comments about my appointed governor's genitals aside. She's rather nice-looking." And Duryodhana had also had more than one fantasy about ripping Draupadi's military uniform off her body, bending her over backwards, and teaching her a lesson about invading other kingdom's territories and mouthing off to men. But he knew better than to share that with anyone, especially with Yudhisthira.

Yudhisthira shook his head. "I don't know if I can--"

"Listen," Duryodhana said. "You and I, our time is running out. We have to get married, sooner rather than later. You haven't been living in Hastinapura and you haven't had Grandpa Bhisma breathing down your neck about this every day, but I have. I don't know if things like 'love' are a luxury that either you or I can afford anymore."

Yudhisthira looked away from him. "Arjuna loves her," he finally said.

"I know," Duryodhana said. And as much as he would love to end up with Draupadi under his thumb, Duryodhana figured that it also wouldn't be so bad to see Arjuna heartbroken and Yudhisthira feeling deeply guilty about something for the rest of his life. It was a win-win situation, for Duryodhana at least. If there was going to be a heart-wrenching family drama over in Indraprastha, Duryodhana wanted to have a front-row seat. "But that's not an issue, here. You're the oldest so you get…" He trailed off, searching for the right word.

" 'Dibs'?"

"I can't believe you just said that."

"You were thinking of saying it." Yudhisthira laughed. Duryodhana watched him carefully, suddenly remembering the old Yudhisthira, who had been pale and nervous and rarely seen without a smokeroll between his fingers. This Yudhisthira was different – a Yudhisthira who stood straight and tall and calm, self-assured and confident, with a smile in his eyes and the weight of a much smaller, less-populated world on his shoulders.

At least his hair was still terrible, though. And his nose. He really did need some decent cosmetic surgery to correct that awful nose.

"It will be Draupadi's choice, anyway," Yudhisthira said. "So we'll have to wait and see."

* * *

X.

Of course, Arjuna spotted Karna and his wife at the dinner banquet that evening. Which he did every evening, and their mutual non-acknowledgement of each other was no different than on any previous evening. Draupadi pointedly would not look at him, however; she spent the evening at Dhristadyumna 's side. Everyone was watching Arjuna, of course. This was neither vanity nor paranoia on Arjuna's part. He could feel their eyes on him. But nobody spoke of what had happened on the archery range that morning. Everyone was too busy speaking about the upcoming wedding. Including Sikhandhi, who singled out Arjuna and spent most of the evening cheerfully talking his ear off.

Arjuna left the banquet as early as he politely could. He found himself a spot in the gardens surrounding the library wing of Drupada's palace, and sat in still, silent meditation for several hours. By the time that he returned to his senses, Arjuna noticed that Panchala's moons had moved far across the night sky, and he figured that it was time for him to retire to bed.

Arjuna walked back toward the guest quarters, not through the inside of the palace, but following the outdoor gardens as far as he could go. He paused when he saw a light and heard familiar voices. Feeling only slightly guilty about not announcing his presence, Arjuna slid carefully around the side of an old tree and watched.

Drona and Ashwatthama were sitting on the veranda surrounding their guest house, heads hunched together, speaking low and quiet in a language that only vaguely resembled Arjuna's textbook Panchalan. Ashwatthama kept touching Drona's right hand and saying something; Drona laughed and tried to brush him aside. Finally Drona said something that Ashwatthama must have found funny, because Ashwatthama momentarily caved in and laughed as well. Drona then brushed off Ashwatthama's hand again and said loudly, "You can come out now, Arjuna."

Arjuna sheepishly stepped into the moonlight.

"Can I get you some tea?" Ashwatthama asked, not at all surprised to see Arjuna standing there. Before Arjuna could answer, however, Drona shook his head and said, "No. No tea. Why don't you go inside and get that thing. That thing that we were talking about."

Without another word Ashwatthama stood up and stepped back into the guest house.

Arjuna stood awkwardly in front of Drona, shuffling his feet. "Um…. Ummmmm…"

Drona sighed and placed a hand on his forehead, wincing with pain. "You're an adult and soon to be a married man, Arjuna," he said, wearily. "If you cannot handle this like an adult, then--" He cut himself off when he opened his eyes and saw that Arjuna had dropped to his knees, bowing so far forward that his forehead touched the ground. "You do not have to go that far," Drona mumbled.

"I'm sorry," Arjuna said into the grass.

"I cannot even _hear _you when you are rubbing your face in the mud like that."

Arjuna stood up hastily. "I'm sorry!" Then he glanced down at Drona's right hand, trying to see what had so concerned Ashwatthama a moment ago. Drona's knuckles were gnarled and the veins on the back of his hand looked swollen. "What's wrong with your hand?" Arjuna asked.

"Just old age," Drona said dismissively. "It is starting to catch up to me. That is all."

"You don't look old."

"I'm older than your Grandpa Bhisma."

Arjuna peered at Drona carefully, frowning deeply. "No way." Drona looked to be half of Bhisma's age.

"Honest." Drona placed his hand over his chest dramatically. "Would I lie to you?"

"Probably."

"Well, all right, yes I would. But I am not lying about this." He stood up. "Things are going to be different, from now on." He looked down at his hand. "I decided that it was time for me to let the years catch up. That is all." He glanced over at Arjuna, saw the confused look on Arjuna's face, and then continued gently. "It is because I am an _agrapani_, Arjuna. Which means that my own flesh and blood do not belong to me. I belong to Drupada. A long time ago, Drupada decided that he did not want me to grow old, at least not yet. He wanted me to be around to teach his children and his grandchildren. So he stopped my body from aging." He shook his head, smiling to himself. "But things have changed since then. I no longer serve Drupada, and Kripi is growing old without me. So I asked Drupada to let me grow old, and he agreed to my request. Because I do not want Kripi to leave me behind. And I cannot keep clinging to this world forever. You and Ashwatthama are already all grown up. And you, Arjuna… You are going to be married soon, yes?"

There it was again. "What are you talking about?" Arjuna asked.

"Princess Draupadi," Ashwatthama said, stepping back onto the veranda. He was holding an ancient, enormous wooden bow in his arms. "You want to marry her, don't you?"

"Yes," Arjuna answered, honestly, as he did not want to lie to Ashwatthama or Drona. "If she'll have me. If it won't make my mother angry. If Drupada doesn't want her to marry my brother instead. If--"

"Trust me, Drupada has a marriage coat fitted for you already," Drona said, drolly. "Which brings us to this." Ashwatthama dropped the enormous bow to the grass with a thud. "Have you ever used one of these before?" Drona asked.

Arjuna glanced down at it. "Sometimes Gandiva looks like that, but…"

"But I never asked you to use the real thing before, have I?" Drona smacked the side of his head. "Stupid Drona." He sat back down on the veranda.

"Well, I don't see why I would ever have to."

"Trust me. You will have to." Drona paused as Ashwatthama sat down beside him. "A little bird told me." Then Drona rolled his eyes. "I cannot believe I am helping you cheat like this."

"It's not really cheating," Ashwatthama pointed out. "It's just extra beforehand preparation."

Arjuna blinked at them both, having completely lost the thread of the conversation.

"Arjuna," Ashwatthama said, suddenly very serious. "Do you really, really want to marry Draupadi?"

Arjuna nodded. "I do."

"If you do that, then Dhristadyumna will be your brother. And Drupada will be your father." Ashwatthama's eyes narrowed. "Are you all right with that?"

Arjuna hesitated. "Are _you _all right with that?"

"What I want doesn't matter. It's your marriage."

"But you're my friend."

"Thank you." Ashwatthama's eyes softened. "Personally, I'd rather you not be saddled with that soulless limpdicked horsetoed stabhappy humorless twat of a brother-in-law, but that's just me. And Draupadi, you know, she seems all right."

Drona's mouth was opening and closing silently. He seemed unable to speak. Finally he took a deep breath and asked, "Who _taught _you such language?!"

"That's what you called Dhristadyumna two nights ago."

"No, no. I did not say that he was 'stabhappy'--"

"You just don't see the way that he keeps fingering his butter knife and staring at your throat during dinner."

"I--"

"Excuse me," Arjuna said loudly. He hefted the bow that Ashwatthama had dropped to the ground. "What exactly am I supposed to do with this?"

"First, you must string it," Drona said.

"How?"

"You must step on the lower limb with your left foot – carefully, now – just the tip of it against the edge of your boot. Now hold the riser, and – wait, wait, no, you will want to turn your face away from the bow, just in case--"

There was the sound of snapping wood and a heavy thud. "Ow!" Arjuna cried out, his hands flying to his face. "That was my nose!"

Drona turned to Ashwatthama. "On second thought, do get that tea," he said. "This is going to be a long night."

* * *

XI.

The last day before the wedding was complete chaos. Yudhisthira managed, somehow, to spend most the day standing still while Drupada's tailors fit him for his guest robes. It was his way of staying calm before the storm. It was calm, that is, until Yudhisthira's mother found him.

"Have you seen Arjuna?" she asked. "Drupada's staff has been looking for him all day. He didn't show up for his fittings this morning, and…" She lowered her voice to a whisper that everyone within a ten step radius could have heard. "Bhima says that he saw Arjuna with a bruised eye. Do you know anything about that?"

"No," Yudhisthira said, shaking his head. "I haven't seen him. What's this about a black eye?"

"He probably walked into a wall," Gandhari said, dismissively. She was, as always, at Kunti's side. "Happens to my Sama all the time."

"We have to find him," Kunti said, urgently. "If he isn't fitted for his robes--"

"Dear, relax." Gandhari squeezed Kunti's shoulders. "You're only missing one son. Thirty of mine are currently unaccounted for. And two of them may have just landed themselves in the middle of a prostitution scandal. But do you see me worrying?" She shook her head. "You and I, we're too old to be worrying. It's not good for the blood pressure."

Kunti took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh. "I miss you in Indraprastha," she said, allowing Gandhari to steer her out of the room.

Fortunately, Arjuna was found later that evening. Yudhisthira caught up with him in his guest suite. Arjuna was simultaneously being fitted for his wedding robes and trying not to wince as Drupada's attendants slathered makeup on his face.

"What happened to your face?!" Yudhisthira gasped, when he saw the damage.

"Bow and… stringing and… snapping…. happened."

"All will be fine by tomorrow, Your Majesty," one of the attendants assured Yudhisthira eagerly. "We've been experimenting with several products and shades, and we believe that soon we will find exactly the right formula to match High Highness's skin tone and mask his injuries."

"The important thing," Arjuna mumbled, "izzat I can do it now. Also… maybe concussion."

Yudhisthira paused for a moment, then he asked, "So, I take it this means that you're back together with Mr. Drona?"

"Could you tell?"

Yudhisthira didn't answer. He barely sleep that night, either. _He _wasn't the one getting married, yet he couldn't help but feel the performance pressure mounting. During the wedding, he would be responsible for the appearance and behavior of all four of his brothers. Yudhisthira sighed and drifted off to sleep, thinking that he did not at all envy Duryodhana his one hundred younger siblings.

Trouble, of course, started very early in the morning, during the breakfast banquet. Sahadeva had dark circles under his eyes and was swaying in his seat.

"What is wrong with you?" Yudhisthira asked, trying to position himself and Bhima to block the general public's view of Sahadeva.

"The lights are too bright," Sahadeva answered, his voice throaty and coarse.

"You're hungover! What were you doing last night?"

"Hey, those Abhiran kids know how to have a good time. We just tagged along," Nakula answered, defensively. Unlike his brother, Nakula seemed bright-eyed and alert.

"You were with him?" Yudhisthira asked. "Why are you all right?"

Nakula shrugged. "It was Sahadeva's turn to get the hangover. I had the last one."

Yudhisthira was suddenly reminded that there was a good reason that he didn't spend too much time attempting to speak to Nakula or Sahadeva. "All right, just… Just take care of your brother and make sure that he doesn't embarrass us. The last thing that we need today are rumors. Or scandals."

"Definitely no scandals," Bhima added, threateningly.

* * *

XII.

The wedding was just that – a wedding – and it seemed to drag on for hours. Arjuna sat and watched the whole thing, although admittedly, he spent more time watching everyone in the audience around and across from him, than he did the actual ceremony. The ceremony was painfully boring, and not even all that different from a Kuru wedding. Sikhandhi looked happy, though. His bride looked stiff and nervous, and she flinched when cameras in the ceremony hall went off. But she seemed happy enough, being close to Sikhandhi.

It was a relief when it was over. Arjuna attempted to stay interested in the formal reception that similarly dragged on for hours afterwards, but eventually even he got tired of faking interest in the dozens of foreign princes and princesses that wanted to talk to him. Arjuna had just managed to excuse himself from a conversation with a young king of some planet or another, on the pretense of getting something to drink, when he saw them.

Draupadi was walking away from the drink table, seeming to float in her elegant formal gown. Holding her hand was Duryodhana, speaking to her as naturally and as comfortably as if he weren't even aware of the dozens of eyes staring at them. Draupadi laughed at something that he said. Arjuna couldn't hear what the two of them were saying, but suddenly, he didn't want to look anymore.

Arjuna passed by them and stopped at the food table, where a servant poured him a drink. "Are you enjoying yourself, Your Highness?"

"Yeah," Arjuna said, sipping his drink. "Sure."

That was when Arjuna felt a shadow fall across him – an enormous shadow. "That's your fourth one in an hour," Bhima said, disapprovingly.

Arjuna was momentarily confused, until he turned around and realized that Bhima wasn't speaking to him. Yudhisthira was taking another shot of lickfire from the hands of a servant. He waved aside Bhima's complaint with his free hand. "I'm fine, Bhima. Look at me! I'm fine."

"But just a minute ago you were actually laughing at one of Dhristadyumna 's jokes. That's not fine, that's drunk out of your gourd."

Yudhisthira, who did not look or sound at all drunk, sipped his drink calmly. "Diplomacy is as diplomacy does," he said.

"It looks like somebody is beating you at the diplomacy game," Bhima said, nodding toward the end of the long balcony that they were standing on, where Draupadi and Duryodhana were descending the stairs to take to the dance floor below them.

Yudhisthira frowned at nothing in particular. Then he tuned his attention toward Arjuna. "How are you holding up?" he asked. "Is your face…?"

"It's fine. It doesn't hurt."

Yudhisthira was silent for a moment, watching Arjuna watching the dance floor. Then he said, "Why don't you ask her to dance?"

"Why don't _you_?" Arjuna shot back, before he could really stop himself.

"Well, er, I thought that you would want to--"

"I'm sorry, I just, I thought that you--"

"_I'll _ask her," Bhima finally grumbled, "if neither of you will."

"I don't think that will be necessary," Yudhisthira suddenly said in a small voice.

Bhima looked away from the dance floor and closed his eyes. "Don't tell me. It's Nakula, right? It's Nakula, isn't it."

"No," said Arjuna, watching the slight red head bob across the dance floor below them. "It's Sahadeva."

Sahadeva whirled his dance partner across the floor and right toward Duryodhana and Draupadi. Draupadi saw them coming, laughed, and let go of Duryodhana's hands, as Sahadeva's partner let go of his. The switch was over and done before Duryodhana even seemed to realize that he was twirling around a complete stranger.

Bhima whistled low under his breath. "That took some guts. Look at Duryodhana's _face._"

"That's my boy," Nakula said, proudly. Arjuna nearly jumped. Nakula seemed as good at inexplicable appearances and disappearances as Sahadeva was. "Well, come on," Nakula said defensively, when he saw Yudhisthira giving him his prissy frown of disapproval. "We needed some Indraprastha representing down there. And with the three of you all fooling around uselessly up here…" He shrugged.

Yudhisthira's frown deepened. "Duryodhana looks upset."

"That's what makes it _funny_," Nakula said.

The music stopped eventually, and the couples on the dance floor started drifting up the stairs toward the food and drinks. Sahadeva and Draupadi ascended the stairs linked arm-in-arm. Draupadi was flushed and slightly out of breath. A stray strand of blue-black hair had escaped from her elaborate topknot, and she was brushing it impatiently out of her eyes with her free hand.

"Here they are," Sahadeva said, leading Draupadi toward his brothers.

Draupadi half-bowed to Yudhisthira. "Your Majesty." She acknowledged the others with a nod, then turned toward Yudhisthira again. "I hope that you are enjoying yourself this evening, Your Majesty."

"I am. We all are. Your father is a great and generous host."

"Thank you." Draupadi gratefully took a shot of lickfire that Sahadeva offered her into her hands. "Tonight is my brother's last night on Panchala." Her eyes suddenly looked sad. "We all want this night to be special. For his sake."

Yudhisthira, Bhima, Nakula, and Sahadeva nodded gravely. And once again, Arjuna suddenly felt as though he were missing something important. He tapped the shoulder of Nakula, who was standing closest to him, and mouthed silently, "_What?!_"

Nakula's eyes widened. He quickly looked around, and then grabbed Arjuna's hand and dragged him a few steps away from the others. Arjuna had one last glimpse of his other brothers and Draupadi standing around talking, before he and Nakula were swallowed into the crowd gathering around the food and drinks. "You mean you don't _know_?" Nakula hissed.

Arjuna shook his head. "Is Dhristadyumna going away somewhere?"

"Not Dhristadyumna . _Sikhandhi._"

"Oh. Is he going away somewhere?"

"_Yes._"

"But why? I thought that Sikhandhi was the next in line for the throne."

"Except that he's totally not." Nakula sighed. "Look, Draupadi was right, don't you ever watch the news?! Oh wait, okay, I forgot, you're too busy whacking yourself in the face with antiquated archery equipment to pay attention to the real world." Nakula pulled Arjuna into a corner where the crowd milling around them would be unlikely to hear their conversation. "Listen to me. Normally the king's eldest son inherits the throne, right?"

"Yeah. So why--?"

"Because Sikhandhi had… a scandal. And the High Council on Panchala declared him impure and unfit to take the throne. So Dhristadyumna is going to get the throne. And Sikhandhi, after he's married, is going to move to Dasarnika. Because King Hiranyavarna of Dasarnika doesn't have any sons, so he offered to give _his _throne to Sikhandhi, if Sikhandhi would marry his daughter. Which he did. Are you following this?"

Arjuna blinked, confused. "But Dasarnika is hundreds of light-years away! It takes months to jump there--"

"Yeah. Which is why it took so long for Hiranyavama and his daughter to get here. The Dasarnika party was the last party to arrive, remember? And that's why," Nakula said, tapping Arjuna's forehead, "when Sikhandhi leaves for Dasarnika tomorrow, we can assume that none of us – and certainly none of his family here – are going to see him again for a long, long time."

"Oh," Arjuna said, in a small voice.

Nakula sighed again. "Good gods, Arjuna, don't you ever pay attention to the gossip channels?!"

Arjuna fiddled with his empty drink glass in his hands. "But I like Sikhandhi. I was kind of thinking, it would be nice if he were the king of Panchala. Then there probably wouldn't be any more fighting between Kuru and Panchala. Sikhandhi likes us all too much to start a war with Kuru."

Nakula laughed softly. "You're right. I hate to say it, but you're right. Imagining _this _planet under the rule of Sikhandhi…" He laughed again, louder. "Arjuna, sometimes you can actually be funny!"

"Hey, Nakula…"

"What?"

"What was this scandal thing?"

Nakula abruptly stopped laughing. In fact, his jaw seemed to drop open. "You… You don't _know_?!"

"No, I--"

"_For the love of fish Arjuna have you been LIVING UNDER A ROCK?!_"

The crowd immediately around them fell silent and turned to stare. "Shhh, shhh!" Arjuna said desperately, even though it was already too late. "Nakula!"

"Oh, for the love of--!" Nakula smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. "You know what, Arjuna? I'm not going to tell you. You can ask someone else and make an ass of yourself, or look it up on the internet later. Gods, I… I can't believe I'm related to someone so dumb. Come on," he said, taking Arjuna's hand and pulling him back into the crowd, which had just begun to mind its own business again. "Let's go back."

They rejoined Arjuna's other brothers in a matter of moments. Draupadi was still with them, talking and laughing. "Where did you two go?" she asked, when she saw Arjuna and Nakula again.

"Nowhere," Nakula said quickly, and unconvincingly. "What'd we miss?"

"Nothing much." Draupadi turned toward Arjuna. "Are you feeling all right, Your Highness? Your face looks a little… swollen."

"It's nothing," Arjuna said, just as quickly and as unconvincingly as Nakula had spoken. "I--"

"ARJUNA!"

And all at once, there was Sikhandhi, striding joyously toward them, his arms held out wide, his new bride Dasarna a mere step behind him. Arjuna watched mutely as his brothers and Draupadi expertly stepped aside, making way for Sikhandhi to swoop in and wrap Arjuna in a tight, bone-crushing hug. "There you are! How've you been?! I've been looking all over for you!"

"But you saw me last night," Arjuna said, his voice muffled from within the many folds of Sikhandhi's wedding robes. "We talked for hours at dinner--"

"Darling," Sikhandhi said, mercifully letting go of Arjuna and turning toward his new wife, "These are my valued friends, the rulers of Indraprastha." Dasarna bowed. Sikhandhi them grabbed Arjuna's shoulders and pulled him close. "Arjuna and I go waaaay back!"

Draupadi suddenly laughed. "We didn't meet them that long ago!"

"Oh yeah, when was it… That contest thing. You should have seen me wrestling," Sikhandhi said to Dasarna. "I was pretty amazing, if I do say so myself."

"You really should have seen him," Nakula piped up. "He was mostly naked and covered in oil for the better part of an entire day."

Yudhisthira looked suddenly appalled, but everyone else laughed. Especially Dasarna, who laughed so hard that tears appeared in the corners of her eyes. "Oh, oh!" she gasped. "I don't suppose that any of you have pictures?"

"I have pictures," Sikhandhi said, letting go of Arjuna long enough to wrap his arms around Dasarna's waist, take her hand in his, and kiss it slowly. "But let us save the kinky bits for the honeymoon, darling."

And it was that line, rather than Nakula's comment, that suddenly caused all of them to fall into an uncomfortable silence. Draupadi stared down at the empty drink in her hands and said nothing. Arjuna watched her hands trembling, and knew what she was thinking. Sikhandhi was never going to come back from his honeymoon. Arjuna suddenly wanted to say something to her, something like _It's all right _or _You can still call him _or _I miss the people in Hastinapura too, _but he was paralyzed, unsure of what to say, afraid that he would say the wrong thing, afraid of being improper.

"Hey, sis," Sikhandhi said, brightly. Draupadi looked up, startled. "You know that thing that Father was talking about?" Sikhandhi suddenly winked, as Draupadi's eyes slowly widened and her face grew taut and tight. "I'm thinking it's going to go down in about five… four… three…."

Draupadi suddenly glanced around frantically. "Who has a watch? What time is it?!"

"Two… one…"

On cue, the music from the dance suddenly ceased, trumpets blared, and the crowd fell silent. The other people on the balcony suddenly surged forward to get a view of the dance floor, where King Drupada was standing, his white beard a stark contrast against his deep purple robes, holding out his hands to command total silence.

"My esteemed guests," Drupada said, his booming voice nearly deafening in the otherwise total silence.

Arjuna peeked over Yudhisthira's shoulder, trying to get a better view of the dance floor. Then he turned his head around, and saw Draupadi standing in the back of the crowd, beside Dasarna, looking miserable. Dasarna wrapped her arms around Draupadi's shoulders. "You're prepared for this," she said, comfortingly, but forcefully. Draupadi shook her head, but said nothing.

"I thank you all," Drupada said, "for honoring myself and the illustrious King Hiranyavarna with your presence at the union of our son and daughter. This is indeed a joyous night," Drupada said, beaming from ear to ear, "and a night for celebration. It is a night to celebrate the loving union between two souls. And a night to wish for the blessings of many more. Which is why," Drupada said, slowing down for dramatic effect, "which is why… The gods and my trusted priests have both advised me that tomorrow, although I will be losing one son, I will also have the opportunity to gain another." Drupada swept out his arms dramatically. "Tomorrow, at noon, my daughter Draupadi will choose her husband!"

For a moment, only a stunned silence greeted this announcement. And then, the crowd roared.

Arjuna turned around and saw that Draupadi and Dasarna were gone, having made a discrete exit. Arjuna wondered how they had accomplished that. He turned around again and fought back to his spot at Yudhisthira's shoulder. Yudhisthira wasn't cheering, but instead looked thoughtful and more than a little bit morose.

Drupada silenced the crowd with another wave of his hand. "Any suitable candidate for my daughter's hand must first pass a simple test," he said.

The last few dwindling cheers and claps from the crowd suddenly ceased.

Dhristadyumna walked solemnly out to his father's side, carrying something enormous in his arms, wrapped in a silver cloth. He silently set whatever he was carrying down on the ground in front of his father. Then he pulled off the silver cloth and tossed it aside.

It was a bow. An enormous, antique wooden bow.

Arjuna's eyes widened, and he felt a strange flutter in his stomach. It was a _familiar _bow.

"This is Pinakin," Drupada said, "the bow of Lord Shiva himself. The Lord has instructed me to use this bow as a test to choose Draupadi's husband."

The crowd erupted again, this time not with cheers. There was a strange mixture of cries of disbelief, spontaneous songs of praise, and prayers uttered from those with enough sense to feel awe in the presence of such an object. Nakula scoffed loudly. "That's not Pinakin. It looks like a piece of junk…" He trailed off when he saw the look that Sahadeva was giving him, though.

Arjuna suddenly grasped at Yudhisthira's arm, without even realizing what he was doing. Yudhisthira winced at the sudden pain. "Arjuna," he hissed.

"Can't believe it," Arjuna muttered under his breath. "Can't believe it can't believe it can't believe it. That's the bow that--"

"The test will be simple," Drupada said, his voice booming over the agitated rumblings of the crowd. "Whosoever can string Pinakin, and use it to shoot a target which I will reveal on the morrow, will be eligible for my daughter's hand. Of course," he finished, his cold and wicked grin barely hidden beneath his flowing white beard, "nor ordinary man will be able to lift this bow."

"Of _course_," Nakula echoed, shooting Arjuna a meaningful glance.

Arjuna swallowed nervously.

* * *

XIII.

"Of _course_ we are," Duryodhana answered huffily, corralling Dusshasana and Durmukha with one sweep of his arm. "Well, not all of us, of course, that would take too long, Drupada would probably throw a fit if we _all_ registered for the groom-choosing, but--" He suddenly stopped and craned his neck, glancing around frantically. "Where is that Angan idiot?!"

"Over there--"

"In. In!" Duryodhana shoved his brothers through the doors to their own wing of the guest palace, and whirled around, searching for Karna in the thinning crowd around him. And there he was, holding Vrishasena's hand, with Susena balanced on his hip. Shrutakiirti, her belly already swollen with her third pregnancy, was talking to someone a few steps away from them.

"Hey. Hey!" Duryodhana strode over to Karna. "I need you. Now." He paused when he saw the look on Vrishasena's face. "Not for long, though."

"I'll be back soon," Karna said, handing Susena over to a waiting attendant as Shrutakiirti took Vrishasena's hand.

Vrishasena said nothing, but finally smiled and waved his tiny free hand in a gesture of goodbye. Duryodhana pulled Karna away from his family quickly. "Listen, I need your help."

"What about?"

"The groom-choosing tomorrow--"

"Wait a minute, what?!"

But by that time Karna had already been ushered into the private wing that Duryodhana shared with his family. Duryodhana slammed the outer doors shut behind him. "We need a strategy," he said, bluntly. He surveyed those whom had already assembled themselves in a circle of cushions surrounding Duryodhana. Dusshasana and Durmukha, arguing over a list of names scrolling down the screen of Durmukha's electronic reader; Ashwatthama, sitting calmly with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap; Shakuni, impatiently fidgeting with a deck of cards that he kept shuffling and re-shuffling in his hands; and Yuyutsu, standing at the back of the room and pouring tea for everyone. Duryodhana pushed Karna into his seat and then stood back, lording over the room with the comfortable ease of a born king. "Strategy," he repeated.

"What, you want to marry Draupadi?" Karna asked, managing to sound both bored and impatient. Duryodhana rankled silently. "You can't. You won't even be able to lift that bow."

"That's true," Ashwatthama said, quietly but firmly. "No human can touch Pinakin." He shook his head. "Only a devakin might be able to. And that's a big 'might.' There's a reason that Drupada made Dhristadyumna carry out Pinakin tonight. Because Drupada himself could never have touched that bow. Only a devakin like Dhristadyumna can."

"No, actually. I don't think so." Duryodhana dismissed Ashwatthama's words with a wave of his hand. "It can't be just devakin. Any worthy human could touch Pinakin, or else there would be no point to this whole contest in the first place. Theoretically."

"_Theoretically _I think you're making that up," said Ashwatthama.

"No, he's not," countered Dusshasana. "Why wouldn't a worthy human be able to touch Pinakin? What, you think that you devakin are really so special?"

"No, but--"

"Could _you _touch it?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I have."

"And there you go," Shakuni said, still shuffling the cards in his hands. "If a priest like Ashwatthama can touch this bow, then surely someone as great as the King of Kuru will be able to handle it."

Ashwatthama gave Shakuni a slightly aghast look. "Right," Duryodhana said quickly, nodding in agreement. "Any worthy human will be able to do it." He turned his gaze toward Ashwatthama, regarding him evenly. "Do you not think me worthy, Ashwatthama?"

"I think that you are worthy to marry Draupadi," Ashwatthama answered, calmly. Duryodhana noted that Ashwatthama did not agree that he was worthy to touch Pinakin, and mentally filed this observation away for later. For the moment, however, he still had bigger problems to deal with.

"You," Duryodhana said, suddenly pointing to Karna. "Could you do it?"

Karna gave him an inscrutable look. "Yes," he said. "But--"

"Yes? Really? Are you sure?!"

Karna sighed. Then he stood up, cracked his knuckles, and with a whisper of white flame his bow suddenly appeared in his hands. Shakuni, at least, was impressed enough to momentarily pause in his shuffling. "This," Karna said, resting his bow against his foot, "_is _Pinakin. In a sense."

Utter silence.

"Wait, wait, wait," Duryodhana said. "You told me that your bow was Vijaya."

"It is. But it's also Pinakin. But also not."

Duryodhana turned expectantly toward Ashwatthama.

"All right. This is kind of hard to explain," Ashwatthama said slowly. "But… Pinakin and Vijaya are the same. But not."

Duryodhana glared at Ashwatthama.

"Forget about the metaphysical idiocy," Shakuni said, having put down his cards long enough to accept a cup of tea from Yuyutsu. "If the Angan can meet Drupada's challenge, then we'll register him."

"Hold up," said Karna. His bow vanished as he placed his hands on his hips. "I can't enter the groom-choosing. I'm already married."

"So?" Shakuni shrugged. "You're royalty now. You can take more than one wife."

"But I don't _want _to marry Draupadi!"

"You don't have to," Duryodhana said, soothingly, placing one hand on Karna's shoulder, gently trying to calm him down. "All that you have to do is win her. Win her, and she'll be yours to do with as you please. Then you will give her hand to me."

Now it was Karna's turn to look mildly aghast. "That has got to be against the rules."

"Actually," said Durmukha, scrolling through the official registration information that he had downloaded to his reader, "According to this, it's not. The groom can choose to offer Draupadi to a different husband. However," he added, looking up at Duryodhana pointedly, "Draupadi has the right to refuse any potential groom, even a man who can string and shoot Pinakin."

Duryodhana's face darkened momentarily, then he regained his composure. "Not a problem," he said quickly. "She won't refuse Karna. Who wouldn't want to marry Karna? _I'd _marry Karna." He turned back toward Karna. "So you'll do this for me, right?"

Karna refused to meet Duryodhana's gaze for a long moment. Then he finally nodded his head and said, "Sure. For you."

"I knew you would." Duryodhana pinched Karna's cheek. "Karna, you are truly the greatest friend a man could hope for. If I were more drunk I would kiss you!" Then he let go of Karna and turned back toward Dusshasana and Durmukha. "Well, that's settled. Draupadi will be mine by this time tomorrow." He was beaming from ear to ear. "Do we have a registrant pool narrowed down yet?"

Durmukha tossed his reader to Duryodhana. "Dusshasana and I picked the fifteen that we think we least likely to embarrass us." He watched Duryodhana scroll through the list and nod at what he read, thoughtfully. "Drupada expects every eligible prince here to register for the groom-choosing, but even he understands that we're in a different situation. All that we need to do is register enough of us to show our support of Drupada. Any more, and we'll outnumber all of the other suitors here. And that would just look terrible."

"Then it's decided," Duryodhana said, clicking the reader shut definitively. "Fifteen on Durmukha's list, plus me, Dusshasana, and Karna." He tossed the reader back to Durmukha. "Well, what are you waiting for?" he snapped. He pointed at Karna and Dusshasana in turn. "You two. Get the others and queue up for registration. I'll be there shortly." He pointed at Shakuni. "You--"

"Find the betting pool? Done already. Although I have to admit, the odds are definitely against you."

Duryodhana sighed. "You're not betting on the outcome of this thing, are you?"

"I don't see why not."

"Go. You. Get out of my sight." Duryodhana herded Karna and his brothers and Shakuni out the door, impatiently. Ashwatthama followed a step behind them. "Oh yeah, and you," Duryodhana called to Ashwatthama as he left, "pray to every deity that you know! Even the obscure ones. It can't hurt to have them on our side."

"As you wish."

Ashwatthama left, and Duryodhana closed the door behind him. He turned around and saw that the room was now deserted, save for himself and Yuyutsu. Yuyutsu was gathering up the used teacups that the others had left behind. He paused and looked up at Duryodhana. "Are you really going through with this?" he asked.

"What, the groom-choosing?" Duryodhana waved his hand, and all of the remaining used teacups in the room scrambled through the air and assembled themselves neatly on Yuyutsu's serving tray. "Of course I am. If anybody can handle Pinakin, it's me. You know that. You and I, we're more powerful than anyone else, human or devakin." He grinned. "Karna is just my back-up plan."

Yuyutsu still looked worried. "Tens of thousands of people will be at the groom-choosing tomorrow," he said, "and hundreds of billions will be watching it on their consoles. If you… If you do something _too _amazing, people will want an explanation. They'll want to know how you did it. What will you do then?"

"Nothing," Duryodhana snapped, impatiently. "That's a non-issue. Look, this Pinakin thing will let any worthy person handle it. Any person with _power_. I'm worthy, and I have power. That's all there is to this."

"Maybe you're right," Yuyutsu said, although he still sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

"Of course I'm right. Am I ever not right?"

* * *

XIV.

"Because it wouldn't be _right_," Kunti said with an indisputable air of finality. "You can't marry before your older brothers do, Arjuna. And it will do nothing for our kingdom's security, either."

"Security?!" Arjuna spluttered, barely restraining himself from shouting at his own mother.

She was sitting calmly, her aged but still deft hands braiding red and yellow silk as she regarded Arjuna silently. "Yes. Security," she responded, calmly. "The marriage of Drupada's only daughter is our only chance to form a peaceful alliance with Panchala. Draupadi must become our queen. She cannot marry a low-ranking prince like you. She must marry a king." Kunti turned toward Yudhisthira, who was standing silently at her shoulder. "You understand, don't you?"

Yudhisthira nodded slowly, although his face was pinched and drawn.

"I'm sorry, Arjuna," Kunti said softly, turning her attention back to her braiding. "I truly am. We all are. We know how you feel about her. But you're a prince, and you have to learn to understand. Love is a selfish luxury that you may indulge in only as long as it does not interfere with your duties to your people." She finished her braid, knotted the end, and stood up slowly. "You will not register for Draupadi's groom-choosing. I forbid it."

Arjuna's mouth opened and closed, and his throat worked silently. "But," he croaked, "But--!"

"You too," Kunti said, draping her braided silk over Yudhisthira's shoulders and pausing to make a last adjustment to the flow of his robes. "You must do your duty for your people, as their king." She touched his cheek, and smoothed a lock of hair away from his face. "She will make a wonderful wife for you."

"But _he'll _never be able to touch Pinakin!" Arjuna suddenly burst out, angrily. "_I _can! I know because I've tried!"

Yudhisthira stiffened. But Kunti turned to Arjuna and said rather angrily, "Your brother is a devakin. Your brotheris the son of Dharma. He is more than worthy to touch the Lord's weapon."

"But he can't shoot--!"

"I've had some practice," Yudhisthira said, quickly. "A long time ago, with Grandpa Bhisma. And besides," he said, a bit nervously, "it can't be that different from shooting a hunting rifle, is it?"

"It's completely different!"

"Are you finished yet?" Bhima suddenly asked, entering unannounced. He grabbed at Yudhisthira's hand. "The registration queue is getting pretty long. We'd better make an appearance down there soon."

"And while we're on the subject," Arjuna continued angrily, completely ignoring Bhima's presence in the room, "How come _Bhima _gets to register and I don't?!"

"Because Bhima is old enough and high-ranking enough to win Draupadi without scandal," Kunti countered, "as long as, in the end, he still hands her over to Yudhisthira to marry."

"So why is _he _so much more important than _me_?"

"Because _he _actually fulfills his duties and runs our military and has ninety percent of the cabinet administration answer directly to him!" Kunti was in full queen mode now, shoulders squared and eyes blazing, refusing to move an inch in the face of Arjuna's epic complaining. "_You _do nothing but waste your every day training your body for no purpose and doing a poor job of keeping your younger brothers out of trouble! You haven't earned the _right _to marry someone like Draupadi yet!"

Arjuna stared at her, his eyes wide and disbelieving. Neither Arjuna nor his mother bothered to acknowledge Bhima or Yudhisthira as they backed slowly out of the room.

Finally Arjuna swallowed and managed to croak indignantly, "But I got the palace for all of you." Then Arjuna winced inwardly. Somehow, he had just managed to make even that incredible feat sound astoundingly lame.

Kunti sighed. "I know, Arjuna."

"I love her."

"No you don't. You just think that you do. Arjuna, you hardly know her."

"I know that I want to marry her."

Kunti sighed again. "Go get some sleep," she said. "You need to calm down."

Arjuna turned away from her and mumbled something under his breath.

"I will permit you to attend the groom-choosing tomorrow, as an observer sitting beside me in the audience," Kunti said, "and as long as you promise not to try anything stupid."

Arjuna clamped his mouth shut and promised nothing. Kunti finally left him alone, slipping silently out of the room.

* * *

XV.

"It doesn't look so scary," Durmada said, eyeing Pinakin critically as it sat beneath its glass case behind the registration table. "It's not even _sparkly_."

Vikata stifled a laugh.

"It's not supposed to be _sparkly_," Duryodhana snapped, a bit impatiently. "At least, I don't think so. It's a weapon of a god. It's too dignified to be sparkly."

"_His_ is sparkly," Durmada said, grabbing at Karna's arm.

Karna shook his head. "I wouldn't say that, not exactly…"

They were standing in line with hundreds of other princes and dignitaries from across the galaxy, waiting for their turn to register. Duryodhana cast one quick glance over his brothers – only seventeen of them – and Karna. They were the backup plans, each and every one of them. Then he turned his gaze back toward Pinakin, resting beneath that glass, displayed behind the registration table. It looked perfectly normal, old and wooden and beaten, as if it had been made by human hands hundreds of years ago. Then he turned his head again, scanning the gathering crowd idly, until he saw Yudhisthira and Bhima entering the hall together. Duryodhana caught Yudhisthira's eye and waved him over. Yudhisthira turned to Bhima, said a few words, and then apparently sent Bhima to the back of the line to secure a spot. Bhima shot one glare in Duryodhana's general direction before stomping off. Then Yudhisthira smiled pleasantly and walked over toward Duryodhana.

"I was going to let you cut in line with us," Duryodhana said.

Yudhisthira laughed. "That's very kind of you, I suppose."

"Your mother made you wear one of these things too?" Duryodhana asked, fingering the red and gold braid hung around his neck. Then he looked around and asked, "Where's Arjuna?" He felt a small thrill of glee when he saw Yudhisthira's eyebrow begin to twitch.

"He's not registering," Yudhisthira said quickly. "Are you all registering together?" he asked Duryodhana's brothers. He briefly glanced at Karna, then glanced away. His eyes roamed for a moment, then he settled his gaze back on Duryodhana and said nervously, "We're being stared at."

"No, _you're _being stared at, and that's probably because you just showed up here without Arjuna."

"Mmmm." Yudhisthira frowned deeply. "Has it always been that obvious to everyone?"

"Painfully obvious."

Yudhisthira leaned in close to Duryodhana and asked quietly, "Do you think that you can do it?"

"What, string and shoot Pinakin?" Duryodhana shrugged. "Can you?"

Yudhisthira thought for a moment. "Bhima can," he said, finally.

"Well there you go." Duryodhana glanced over Yudhisthira's shoulder and saw someone far more interesting than Yudhisthira. "Hey, isn't that the Rumkiri kid from Madra?"

"His name is Rukmaratha--"

"Rukmaratha!" Duryodhana exclaimed, stepping out of line and neatly around Yudhisthira, walking toward Rukmaratha with open arms.

Rukmaratha looked momentarily startled, then regained his composure, and bowed low. "Your Majesty."

Duryodhana barely waited for Rukmaratha to straighten up before he grasped Rukmaratha's hands in his. "I'd been looking forward to meeting you!" he gushed. He watched Rukmaratha's face carefully, gauging the nervousness in the young man's eyes, but noting his surprised yet pleased expression. "And you can drop the 'Your Majesty,' we're practically family."

"We _are_ family," Yudhisthira said, firmly. He bowed his head quickly, slightly to Rukmaratha. "Did you register for the groom-choosing?"

"Yes," Rukmaratha said, managing to pull his hands free of Duryodhana's overenthusiastic grasp. He laughed nervously. "I figured that I should register, since all the princes here are registering. But it's not as if I stand a chance. Then again, neither do most of the candidates here. So at least I won't be humiliated alone. I mean…." He managed to glance away from both Yudhisthira and Duryodhana. "I'm not a devakin."

"That doesn't_ matter_," Duryodhana said, quickly, vehemently. And perhaps a bit too loudly. Heads were suddenly turning in his direction.

Rukmaratha's face drained of color. "My apologies, Your Majesty. I didn't mean to imply--"

"A piece of advice," Duryodhana said, drawing himself up to his full height and towering over the younger man. "You'll never become a true king so long as you keep comparing yourself to _them_."

Rukmaratha stared at Duryodhana silently for a long moment, his eyes wide and bright. Then he turned away quickly. "I have to go," he said, stepping away from Duryodhana and Yudhisthira as quickly as dignity would allow.

Yudhisthira said nothing. Finally, Duryodhana said, "No offense, you know."

"I know," Yudhisthira said quietly. "I should get back to Bhima," he said. Then he too left, walking slowly toward the back of the line.

Duryodhana returned to his spot in line. "No offense," he repeated quickly, tossing the apology haphazardly in Karna's general direction.

Karna shrugged and said nothing.

* * *

To be continued.


	19. Interlude: Rukmaratha

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: RUKMARATHA

* * *

Rukmaratha still wasn't used to being unable to walk around unless he was surrounded by bodyguards and servants. But in Sagala, it was a necessity. In Sagala, people were still talking. In Sagala, the purist faction was still plotting. In Sagala, Rukmaratha wasn't allowed to step outside the palace unless he was wearing a light-armor vest beneath his clothing.

Rukmaratha had hoped to get away from all of that during his first official vacation as the crown prince of Madra, but this had turned out to be a naïve hope. Even without the constant risk of assassination, Rukmaratha soon discovered that a prince just did not walk around alone. It simply never happened.

But there was one place that Rukmaratha could go where the guards couldn't follow him.

"I'll be finished soon," Rukmaratha said, as he removed his expensive shoes and his guards assumed their positions around the entrance to the temple. "Wait here," he said, even though they knew better than to follow him inside. Then Rukmaratha slipped inside the temple, breathing deeply in the familiar smell of incense and lamp oil, feeling the comforting atmosphere of the old stone walls and the benign gaze of the watching god-statues envelop him.

Rukmaratha walked quietly, listening to the sound of his own bare feet slipping across the cool stone floor. It was late at night, and not a soul was around. Rukmaratha supposed that most everyone was busy either sleeping or preparing for the groom-choosing in the morning. Rukmaratha thought that perhaps he should be nervous on the eve before his first groom-choosing, but instead he felt a strange sense of ease. In fact, he felt relaxed. It was fortunate that his first groom-choosing would be an event in which he and likely hundreds of other princes were _expected _to fail miserably. There was no performance pressure because there was no hope for any sort of performance. Rukmaratha stifled a chuckle, which he felt might have been inappropriate to let slip while he was standing in front of a snarling statue of Kali.

Finally Rukmaratha found a chamber where a statue of Shiva sat, silently meditating in his eternally frozen stone form. Rukmaratha stood in front of the statue and stilled himself.

Eventually, however, Rukmaratha heard quiet breathing. And he realized that he wasn't alone.

Rukmaratha turned his head and saw Dhristadyumna standing a few steps away from him, his hands raised in prayer, his eyes closed. Dhristadumya's eyes suddenly fluttered open, and he met Rukmaratha's startled gaze.

Rukmaratha turned away quickly. He felt ashamed, as if he had just been caught spying on someone during an intimate moment. "My apologies, Your Highness," he mumbled quickly.

Dhristadyumna lowered his hands. "There's no need to apologize. You're… Rukmaratha, right?"

"Yes. We met at the reception."

"Ah."

Rukmaratha turned his head to look at Dhristadyumna again, and saw Dhristadyumna quickly reach up and wipe the corner of his eye. His fingers came away wet, gleaming in the candlelight. "Did you register for the groom-choosing?" he asked.

"I did, Your Highness."

"Good. I'm honored." Dhristadyumna wiped his eyes again. His hand was trembling, slightly. But his voice, for the moment, was still steady and even. "Peace be to Madra," he said. It was clearly a dismissal.

Rukmaratha bowed to him. "I will pray for your brother and sister," he said, as he turned to leave.

"Thank you. So will I," Dhristadyumna said. This time, his voice hitched slightly.

Rukmaratha paused for a moment, unsure if he should say something more. The part of him that had once trained to be a psychologist wanted to say something more. He wanted to say that he understood how Dhristadyumna must have felt, how lonely it would be without his brother and sister, how much he would miss them, how much he would worry about them. But the part of Rukmaratha that was becoming a king knew that now was the time to simply leave Dhristadyumna to his tears, and to walk away quietly. For Rukmaratha to offer words of comfort at this moment would nearly be an insult to Dhristadyumna. It would be an acknowledgement that he had just seen Panchala's crown prince crying alone in the dark. No, the polite thing for Rukmaratha to do, at this point, would be to forget the whole thing – and to signal to Dhristadyumna that he was going to forget the whole thing, by leaving.

So Rukmaratha turned around to leave. Unfortunately, Ashwatthama was just stepping into the hallway behind him. Rukmaratha nearly walked right into him.

"Pardon. Pardon!" Ashwatthama said quickly, bowing low. "Beg pardon, Your Majesty." He straightened his back but kept his head bowed. "My apologies."

Rukmaratha still wasn't used to people tripping all over themselves to apologize to him, much less devakin. "That's--"

"Leave," Dhristadyumna suddenly said, loudly, from the spot where he was still standing in front of the Shiva statue.

Ashwatthama started visibly. He hadn't even seen that Dhristadyumna was there.

"Leave," Dhristadyumna repeated. "Ashwatthama, you're not welcome here."

But Ashwatthama didn't leave. He stepped around Rukmaratha, slowly, and then stood his ground. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, "but not even a king has the right to cast a priest out of a temple. I came here to pray."

"Very well." Dhristadyumna stood silently for a moment, smoldering with an almost palpable hatred. Then he turned quickly on his heels and said "I'm done here."

"I'm sorry," Ashwatthama said.

"I doubt you are. I thought that you weren't supposed to feel anything."

Dhristadyumna stormed past Rukmaratha without another word. Rukmaratha listened to his sharp, clipped footsteps echoing down the hallway. Even barefoot, Dhristadyumna still managed to produce intimidating-sounding footsteps.

Then Rukmaratha stepped back in front of the statue and stood still again, folding his hands in prayer. Well, no sense in leaving now. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Ashwatthama, but the other man offered nothing interesting to observe, his eyes closed and his body relaxed in prayer. The mark on his forehead gleamed in the candlelight.

Rukmaratha lost track of time, standing still and breathing in the atmosphere of the place. But after some time, he finally breathed out slowly, breaking the silence, then turned and walked toward a row of benches lining the back of the room. He sat down slowly on one, trying to be as silent as possible in doing so. Ashwatthama, however, opened his eyes and turned his head. "Can't concentrate?" he asked.

"Not tonight."

"Am I--?"

"No. Your presence feels peaceful."

"Peaceful? I've been trying _not _to have violent fantasies about Dhristadyumna this whole time."

Rukmaratha raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure that you're really a priest?"

"Hmm." Ashwatthama sat down next to Rukmaratha, comfortably, familiarly, without a trace of the formal deference that he had shown earlier. "Are you sure that you're really a prince?"

Rukmaratha laughed. "I could behead you for that."

"You'd have to get past Duryodhana first." Ashwatthama folded his hands in his lap. "_Your _presence is peaceful," he suddenly said. It was an amazingly forward thing to say, and he said it without a trace of joking in his voice. "Please don't take this the wrong way, I mean it as a compliment, but… One can tell that you weren't born a king. Because kings are always so full of chaos."

"Chaos. Huh." Rukmaratha scratched his ear. He didn't care that it was an undignified thing to do. He didn't feel, at the moment, like he had to play the part of the prince anymore. "Not yet, anyway. Give me a few years. You know, I wasn't born into your line of work, but once upon a time, I was getting as close as a person of my blood could get."

"I thought your father was an ambassador?"

"My birth-father, yes. But I was going to be a doctor. A psychologist, actually. I mean, before this happened," Rukmaratha said, gesturing to indicate his expensive clothing, and the jeweled rings on his fingers. "I finished half of my undergraduate degree before my career change."

Ashwatthama laughed. "Psychology, huh? I suppose that really is the closest thing to what I do every day. Taking care of a royal family's spiritual well-being is kind of the same thing."

"Then maybe you're already a psychologist," Rukmaratha said, "even if you don't call it that." He held out his hand. "Secret handshake?"

"…We have a secret handshake?"

"We _should _have one," Rukmaratha said with a longing sigh.

Ashwatthama started to laugh, when suddenly the comm unit on his belt started to buzz insistently. He picked it up with a sigh and flipped it open. "Your Majesty?"

But the voice that came from the comm unit, ringing loud and clear through the echoing prayer room, most certainly did not belong to Duryodhana. "You have to _talk _to him!" Draupadi insisted.

"Who--? _Your Highness_--?"

"Why didn't Arjuna register for the groom-choosing?!"

Rukmaratha sat very still and tried to pretend that he wasn't listening to the conversation unfold. He could hear both sides loud and clear; and Ashwatthama certainly wasn't making any move toward a more private location. "Your Highness, how did you get my access number--?"

"You're his _friend_, aren't you? What's going on?!"

"I-- I don't know, I didn't know that he didn't register…" Ashwatthama suddenly shot a desperate look at Rukmaratha, but Rukmaratha shook his head slowly. No, Arjuna hadn't registered.

"Talk to him," Draupadi insisted, again. "I know that you're not one of my subjects and I know that I have no right to demand anything of you. But I trust you more than I trust either of the kings of Kuru right now. Please, Ashwatthama. Will you do this for me?"

Ashwatthama nodded, even though she couldn't see him do so. "I'll try."

"Thank you. Truly." And with a click, Draupadi's voice was gone.

Ashwatthama pulled the comm unit away from his ear and held it in his hand, frowning at it contemplatively. "How _did_ she get my access number?" he asked the placid statue of Lord Shiva sitting in front of them, his arms poised in a frozen blessing. Then Ashwatthama shook his head and muttered to himself, "Never mind." He started dialing on the comm with his thumb, as Rukmaratha sat and watched him silently, wondering if Ashwatthama even remembered that he was still there. Ashwatthama finally brought the comm back to his ear and listened for the telltale click the other end of the comm line connecting. "Arjuna, did you--?"

"Arjuna's busy," Nakula said from the other end of the comm unit, his voice every bit as loud as Draupadi's voice had been. Rukmaratha winced inwardly. Of all the many souls on all the many planets, perhaps only Draupadi and Nakula would speak into a comm unit loud enough for anyone within a ten-step radius of the other end to hear. "What, who is this? Psychopath Panchalan or Psychopath Panchalan Junior?"

"_This is Junior._ I need to speak to Arjuna. I can hear him yelling in the background. Did you steal his comm?"

"He can't talk to you, we're fixing his ears, his makeup will smear, and his hair dye is still setting."

"…What are you doing?"

"Uh, nothing. Nothing!"

"Tell Arjuna I'm coming over there."

"You'll never find us!"

"The comm unit that you're holding has a location pinger."

"Oh. Right."

Ashwatthama hung up his comm with a click before Nakula could say anything else. "Well," he said, "even if it means having to deal with _those _two… I did promise Draupadi that I would try."

* * *

II.

Arjuna hadn't lied. He would never lie to his own mother. He had just told her that if he was only to be allowed to go to the groom-choosing ceremony just to watch, well, then he would rather not watch. It was too painful to watch. So Arjuna's mother had nodded and hugged him and sent him to bed.

And it had been well past midnight, when everyone else had already gone to sleep, that Arjuna had flipped open his comm unit and called Nakula.

"So I didn't lie," Arjuna explained again, as Sahadeva massaged another glop of dye into his hair. "I told Mother that I'm not going to go just to watch. And I'm not."

"All right, so…" Ashwatthama rubbed at his forehead, as if it hurt. "So you avoid the sin of deceit on a technicality. But still, _this will never work._"

"Actually," said Rukmaratha, who was two steps behind Ashwatthama, "Actually, I think…" He trailed off, uncertain. "Not that I'm denying that it's insane, mind you, but…"

"See? Rukmaratha gets it. But of course he does, he's Madran. This will work because it's brilliant," Nakula said, holding up a shirt to Arjuna's shoulder and eyeing in critically, judging the way that its grey color offset Arjuna's newly-lightened hair. "And it's not against the rules, either. An unregistered groom can still ask permission to participate on the day of. It's an open groom-choosing."

"This will be just like when I came to Panchala before," Arjuna said. "I know how to make myself unnoticeable in a crowd. If I concentrate, I can make it so that nobody will recognize my face. Mr. Drona taught me how."

"Yes, but in front of broadcast cameras?"

"Look," said Nakula. "He's going to be with the military crowd. The broadcast cameras won't even be filming him until he steps forward to take Pinakin."

Rukmaratha watched the debate silently, afraid to step in and take a side. But then Sahadeva was suddenly at his shoulder, tapping at Rukmaratha's foot with his own, which Rukmaratha figured, in Sahadeva's mind, was likely a perfectly acceptable alternative for tapping someone's shoulder, especially when one's hands were dripping with hair dye. "Can you help me comb Arjuna's hair?" he asked. "It's a two-person job, really." He blinked up at Rukmaratha was his oddly-colored, inhuman eyes. "Please?"

It was an odd request, to be sure. But Rukmaratha found himself smiling just to be asked. "Of course," he said. He hadn't known Sahadeva for long, but he already knew that Sahadeva was a lot easier to read than rumors otherwise would suggest. _If Sahadeva likes you,_ Shalya had once told Rukmaratha, _he'll ask you to help him with something. _It would be something simple, though. Sahadeva rarely trusted anyone other than his brother Nakula to accomplish anything important correctly.

Rukmaratha stepped behind Arjuna and watched Sahadeva begin working on one side of Arjuna's head. Then he picked up a comb and followed suit on the other side. Meanwhile, Arjuna ignored them both and kept pleading with Ashwatthama. "If I'm in uniform and in rank with the other soldiers, nobody will ever spot me," he said.

"Speaking of which, where did you get that?" Ashwatthama asked, pointing angrily at the Panchalan navy uniform that was hung in one corner of the room.

Sahadeva paused in the midst of combing Arjuna's hair. "I'd tell you, but… Right now, that's between me and God." He finished unraveling a particularly nasty wet tangle of hair, and reached for a towel to wipe his hands on.

Arjuna ignored Sahadeva's reply and plowed gamely forward with his argument. "Look, we've got two hours until sunrise, four hours until the ceremony starts. All I need to do is be dressed and in the naval ranks when it starts. That's how I get in."

"You know that impersonating a naval soldier is a capital offense, right?"

" 'Capital' as in--?"

"As in you could be executed, _idiot._"

Arjuna snorted. "No government would seriously execute someone for--"

"This is Panchala. Yes, they will."

"Well, that's the risk."

"Don't try to talk him out of this," Nakula said. "He's in _loooove_. He has the right to die for love."

"It would make such beautiful headlines," Sahadeva said wistfully.

"You told me that Draupadi sent you to make sure that I tried for her hand tomorrow," Arjuna said, eyeing Ashwatthama evenly, ignoring Sahadeva and Rukmaratha painfully combing through the tangles in his hair. "It sounds to me like the odds are stacked in my favor. So I need you to give this message to Draupadi for me. Tell her that I'll be there. Tell her not to turn down any unregistered challengers. Can you tell her that, for me?"

Ashwatthama rubbed the mark on his forehead again. He looked to Rukmaratha, as if seeking a voice of reason, but Rukmaratha looked away and resumed busily attacking a snarl in Arjuna's hair. Ashwatthama looked again to Arjuna and said, "You know, the point of a secret conspiracy is that you're not supposed to tell anyone."

"But you have to tell Draupadi for me."

Ashwatthama sighed. "All right, Arjuna. I'll do this. For you."

* * *

III.

The sun had already risen by the time that they finished.

"Well?" Arjuna asked, buttoning up the last of his uniform buttons. "How do I look?"

The twins clapped enthusiastically. Rukmaratha joined in. The four of them were alone in the innermost drawing room of Arjuna's guest suite. Ashwatthama had left an hour ago to relay his message to Draupadi.

"Listen," Nakula said, glancing at a clock across the room, "You have to go. As in, _now._"

"Wish me luck."

"You're going to need it. Sure."

"Thank you," Arjuna said. Then he turned to Rukmaratha and said, "And really, thank you, too. You didn't have to help us."

"Yes I did," Rukmaratha said, quickly. "You're my family now." He winced as soon as he said it, because it sounded so horrifically trite. But it was still a lot better-sounding than _I need to prove to you that I'm your family now_, which would have been closer to the truth. "I'll be praying for you," he finished, lamely.

Arjuna nodded once, gratefully. Then he turned and slipped out of the room, silently, and quickly. Rukmaratha merely blinked once, and then Arjuna was gone.

"Well," said Nakula, "he should have no trouble sneaking around." Then he looked around the room, at the discarded clothes and dye-soaked towels and styling products and makeup that had been tossed about heedlessly during their frantic overnight work. "We need to clean this up and get out of here before somebody sees us."

Rukmaratha knelt down to pick up a towel, but Sahadeva said, loudly, "You don't have to do that."

Rukmaratha shook his head. "Yes I do. You're my--"

"We could get in big trouble for this," Nakula suddenly said. "Conspiring together. Lying to our parents and to Drupada's officials. Helping Arjuna impersonate a naval soldier. Stealing Panchalan military equipment – er, Arjuna's hat and boots, at least. Not to mention crimes against fashion." He wrinkled his nose. "I know that it was all for the sake of creating a disguise, but ugh, that hair color… I don't think we could have picked a shade that would've looked worse on Arjuna."

Rukmaratha stood up straight and began ticking off on his fingers. "Lying, stealing, conspiracy, and crimes against fashion. Yes, I'd say that's a fairly auspicious start to the day. Especially the day of my first groom-choosing."

Nakula snorted. "I can't believe you used to be a headsniffer, or whatever." Then he chuckled. "All right. All right, you know what? I like you, Rukmaratha."

"That's never a good sign," Sahadeva told Rukmaratha, solemnly.

Rukmaratha wasn't sure how to react, so he forced himself to laugh. Although he wasn't sure if Sahadeva was trying to be funny. Then Nakula said, "Hey, ah… You should be getting back, soon. Uncle Shalya wakes up early."

"Yes, he does…"

"I'll go with you," Nakula suddenly said. "Sahadeva, take care of the cleanup," he ordered casually, as he reached out and grasped Rukmaratha's hand. Rukmaratha was dragged halfway out the door before he could utter a word of protest.

IV.

Rukmaratha and Sh—No, his father – shared a suite of rooms not far from where the Kuru royals were staying. The king – no, Shalya – no, no, no, Rukmaratha's _father_ – was already awake and dressed when Rukmaratha returned. He was sitting in the dining room, eating his breakfast and listening to an aide read him his comm messages. When he saw Rukmaratha and Nakula enter the room, he stood up immediately, his brow furrowed. "You didn't come back last night," he said, carefully eyeing Rukmaratha.

Rukmaratha felt his heart thumping painfully in his chest. "Ah… I was, see…. I was…."

Shalya's eyes flickered to Nakula, then back to Rukmaratha, then to Nakula again. And then, his face softened, because he had finally made the only logical conclusion that a father could make when his son showed up early in the morning with mussed hair, tired eyes, and Nakula in tow. "Were you out with girls?" he asked.

"Caught red-handed," Nakula said, laughing. He shuffled his feet, projecting an extremely convincing aura of sheepishness. "Look, it's not Rukmaratha's fault. Sahadeva and I dragged him along."

"I can believe that." Shalya sighed out through his nose.

"Hey, Uncle Shalya," Nakula suddenly asked. "Can I sit with you and Rukmaratha at the groom-choosing today?"

Rukmaratha was taken aback. He hadn't expected this. If Nakula sat beside him at the groom-choosing, it would be nothing but a purely political statement: a statement that Nakula endorsed Rukmaratha's claim to the throne. A statement being made in front of broadcast cameras from hundreds of planets, an act being viewed by countless billions of people across the galaxy.

Shalya looked equally taken aback by the request. He glanced back and forth, at Rukmaratha, at Nakula, at Rukmaratha again. Rukmaratha could see him weighing his options. On the one hand, Nakula's public endorsement would immeasurably strengthen Rukmaratha's political credibility on Madra. On the other hand, by making such a statement, Nakula was risking an explosive backlash from the pureblood faction on Madra. He might be putting both himself and Rukmaratha in danger.

But Rukmaratha understood and accepted that. He had understood the risks the moment that the High Council had ripped his textbooks from his hands, had told him that he was no longer a scholar and would never be a doctor, and had given him a crown instead. Rukmaratha told his father as much with his eyes; and finally, Shalya nodded. "All right," he said. "If Yudhisthira doesn't object."

"Thanks," Nakula said, turning to leave. "I'll see you soon, then." He left, winking at Rukmaratha before he stepped back out the door.

Shalya shook his head, watching Nakula leave. Rukmaratha watched him carefully, noting the soft expression on his face, the lingering warmth in his eyes.

For some reason, watching his father look at Nakula that way, it made Rukmaratha feel cold.

Suddenly Shalya turned to Rukmaratha and said darkly, "You stayed out all night drinking with girls on the night before a groom-choosing?"

"Ah… Yes?"

Shalya sighed and rubbed his beard. Then, slowly, he smiled. "I would tell you never to do that again," he said, smile-wrinkles crinkling around his eyes, "but from the looks of you, I'd say that you learned your lesson."

Rukmaratha shuffled his feet. "Is it that obvious?" He didn't need to look in a mirror to know that there were dark circles under his eyes, and that his face was probably drawn and nervous.

"Sit down and eat something," Shalya said, pulling out a chair. Rukmaratha sat down gratefully, and moments later, a servant appeared over his shoulder, setting down bowls of fruit and yogurt in front of him. Rukmaratha felt his stomach rumbling, the saliva pooling in his mouth. He reached for some yogurt, but Shalya suddenly touched his shoulder and said, "Wait."

Rukmaratha froze, waiting.

And then a servant set down another bowl in front of him. The bowl was small, and plain, and wooden – a glaring contrast to the fine Panchalan porcelain laid out on the rest of the table. And in the bowl was some water, and in the water was a fish. It was thin and silver and about the size of Rukmaratha's thumb. It had no room to swim in the bowl, and merely floated, mindlessly, or perhaps aware of and already resigned to its fate.

Rukmaratha stared at his father, quizzically.

"On the morning of my first groom-choosing," Shalya said, "and, er, on the morning of the subsequent five groom-choosings that I attended before I married my first wife – ah, anyway – on the morning before my first groom-choosing, my father gave me one of these. His father had given him the same, and his father, and so on…" He chuckled. "It's a family tradition. The silverscale is a sacred fish. Consuming one will bring you a happy and fertile marriage."

"By 'consuming' you mean--"

"If it lives and dies inside of you, you will receive its blessing."

Rukmaratha stared down at the fish in front of him. "You brought this all the way from Madra?"

"I suspected that Drupada would pull a groom-choosing out of his sleeve," Shalya chuckled. "I would also have liked to have shared a decent breakfast steak with you this morning, if only for good luck. But, unfortunately, such meat is forbidden on Panchala. I have little respect for that asinine taboo, but I do have a great deal of respect for Drupada, and I would be loathe to insult his culture and traditions while a guest in his home. So. Rukmaratha, I am sorry. But this fish is the best good-luck charm that I can bestow upon you, given the circumstances."

Rukmaratha laughed, comfortably. He thought it was silly, the way that his father was attaching such melodramatic importance to their current lack of breakfast steak. But he also knew that, on rare occasions, sometimes his father was deliberately just a bit silly. And Rukmaratha knew that his father secretly delighted in having someone to laugh at his strange, subtle jokes. Rukmaratha was beginning to suspect that perhaps all kings had two faces: their dignified public face, and their more private and decidedly odder faces, which they only revealed to a trusted few. And yes, those private faces were always a bit odd, just a bit offbeat. Because all kings eventually went a little bit insane, Rukmaratha thought.

There were many species of bovine creatures native to Madra, all of which were bred and consumed for food. On Panchala and on Kuru, eating bovine flesh was sacrilege. Rukmaratha slowly realized that his father's complaint about Panchala's meat taboo was not just another one of his understated jokes, but also meant to be a lesson to the new Crown Prince. Rukmaratha nodded to himself slowly, absorbing the wisdom of his father's words. No matter how stupid another kingdom's laws may be, Madra royalty must always respect the cultures of the kings who would be their allies. This was a good lesson to be reminded of, Rukmaratha thought. And he was still new to this whole royalty thing, so he needed a lot of reminders.

But he was learning. Rukmaratha was confident that he _could _learn more, that he could learn to be a proper prince, and eventually a great king. The gods themselves had chosen him, after all. And his new father believed in him. And Rukmaratha loved him for that.

Rukmaratha stared down at the fish. Both he and his father held no delusions about the groom-choosing that day. They knew that Rukmaratha would not be able to pass Drupada's test. But that made Rukmaratha no different from the hundreds of other princes that had registered for the groom-choosing merely as a gesture of diplomatic support.

Still, it didn't matter if it was futile. Today was Rukmaratha's first groom-choosing, and his most public debut as the crown prince of Madra yet. Today was not just an event that Madra would be watching, it was an event that the entire galaxy would be watching.

Today was a milestone. Today was _important._

Rukmaratha glanced over at his father, who was watching him intently, and even a bit nervously.

Then Rukmaratha looked back down at the fish. He slipped his hands around the bowl and slowly lifted it to his lips.

Rukmaratha had been though a lot in the past year. He had lost his carefree anonymity and his life as a privileged university student. He had once thought that studying medicine, and the science of psychology, had been difficult. But that had been the easy life, compared to what the gods had had in store for him. He had traded in his medical books and his journal papers for law and economics, for policy and politics, for scandal and hatred and light-armor vests. He accepted all of this, because it was his fate to accept all of this. But even with acceptance he still had some lingering regrets.

However, there was one thing that he would never regret, and one thing that he would always be thankful for. And that was finally being given a real father.

Rukmaratha closed his eyes and tipped the bowl into his mouth. The silverscale wriggled defiantly as it slid down his throat, but Rukmaratha refused to choke or gag. He swallowed, winced, and then set the bowl back down again. Then he looked up at his father.

Shalya was clearly impressed. "You did much better than me my first time."

"Dare I ask?" Rukmaratha said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

"…Do you promise not to tell anyone?"

"I promise."

"I spit the damn thing clear across the room and it landed in a plate of blood pudding. It flopped around and made an unbelievable mess. And my father was furious."

Rukmaratha laughed, because all of a sudden he could see a mental image of the incident so clearly that he couldn't help but laugh. And his father joined in, and Rukmaratha looked up at him, and saw that Shalya was finally looking at him the same way that he had looked at Nakula, but this time with tears of laughter in his eyes.

* * *

To be continued.


	20. Chapter 10: Draupadi

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER TEN: DRAUPADI

* * *

It was so easy, Arjuna found. Almost too easy. Easy to convince Yudhisthira to leave without him because he would rather stay in his quarters and sulk; easy to slip out of the palace; easy to slip into the ranks of Panchalan naval soldiers as they filed toward the arena where the groom-choosing would be held. Arjuna marched in stride past the cheering crowds and the humming broadcast cameras, listening to the unfamiliar clip-clop of his boots blend in with the sharp footsteps of the dozens of soldiers around him.

Arjuna stood at attention with the other naval soldiers as they ringed the arena floor, trying to scan the crowds seated around him as discretely as possible. It wasn't hard for Arjuna to find the Kuru party, since there were so many of them. He saw Yudhisthira and Bhima and Sahadeva seated together; not far from them Arjuna saw Duryodhana and his brothers. Karna was there too, at Duryodhana's side. Arjuna groaned inwardly. Karna was wearing the blue and gold knot pinned to his chest that signified that he was a registered contestant in the groom-choosing. Arjuna forced his eyes to keep scanning, and saw King Shalya and Rukmaratha seated together, with Nakula. Huh, that was a surprise. Arjuna tuned out the dancers currently performing on the arena floor, and watched Nakula and Rukmaratha talking to each other. Nakula said something, and Rukmaratha laughed. Arjuna marveled silently, watching Nakula behave like a well-bred, dignified prince actually should.

Suddenly the crowd fell silent, and Arjuna snapped his attention back to the arena floor. The crowd of dancers were parting; Dhristadyumna and Draupadi walked out onto the arena floor, side-by-side, wearing matching robes and gowns of gold and blue. Dhristadyumna held Pinakin in his arms; Draupadi was holding a garland of flowers.

Total silence.

Dhristadyumna set down Pinakin in the center of the arena floor. He carefully laid out Pinakin's gleaming string beside the bow. Then he straightened up, raised his head, and scanned the crowd. "This is the bow," he said, pointing to it. "And that," he said, raising his arm to point at the open sky above the arena, "is the target."

As one, thousands of heads tilted back, eyes straining skyward. There were more than a handful of dismayed gasps as people finally spotted the target, an erratically whirring drone buzzing in uneven circles in the sky above the arena. The drone caught the sunlight and gleamed; Arjuna figured that it couldn't have been much larger than the palm of his hand.

"Anyone who can string the bow and take down the target may ask for my sister's hand," Dhristadyumna said. "That is all."

Draupadi turned and walked silently toward the end of the arena. A pair of soldiers peeled off the ranks on the arena floor and followed her. She ascended into the seated crowd and took her place beside her father, sitting down slowly. Side by side, Draupadi and Drupada sat on their thrones in the front of the crowd and surveyed the arena floor dispassionately.

"I will call the contestants now," Dhristadyumna said. An officer stepped forward and handed him an electronic reader. He flipped it open, pulled up the screen, and began to read. "From Abhira, the first Crown Prince Rajiva."

Arjuna watched the slight Abhiran prince stride out onto the arena floor, the blue-gold knot pinned to his chest standing out in stark contrast to his white clothes. Rajiva bowed low to Dhristadyumna, then turned slightly and bowed even lower to Drupada and Draupadi. Draupadi nodded at him and smiled, indicating her permission for him to proceed.

So Rajivs took a deep breath, appeared to still himself and pray for a moment, then bent over and attempted to pick up one end of Pinakin, He hefted, and hefted, but the bow would not lift. Rajiva spread his legs apart wide for balance, groaned audibly, and heaved with all his might. But the bow would not budge. It was as if it was glued to the ground.

Murmurs of disappointment spread through the crowd. Dhristadyumna finally stepped forward and tapped Rajiva on the shoulder. Rajiva let go of the bow and stood up sheepishly. He bowed to the crowd again, and was met with a few half-hearted attempts at applause. Rajiva walked off the arena floor as Dhristadyumna called the next contest. "From Abhira, the second Crown Prince…"

And thus they came. And endless string of princes, each one striding proudly out into the arena, each one unable to lift Pinakin even so much as a hair off the ground. Arjuna watched Rukmaratha take his turn, squatting in front of the bow and actually planting his knees on the ground in order to get some leverage, but it was no use. He couldn't lift the bow at all.

Finally, when the sun had risen to a point directly above the arena, Drupada stood and spread out his arms, hushing the crowd. "A break," he declared, "and a feast! We will continue this ceremony after a well-deserved rest."

As the crowd poured out of their seats, Arjuna marched with the naval soldiers out of the arena. The soldiers started piling into transports and Arjuna joined along; after a thirty minute drive, Arjuna realized that they had arrived at the military base near Kampilya's spaceport. Arjuna joined the other soldiers in their mess hall, sat down, and did his best to down the military rations that he was fed. When he was finished, he slipped out of the mess hall – it was again too easy to do, even in plain sight of his erstwhile superior officers – and headed for a deserted part of the base to catch his breath, get his bearings, and pray. Arjuna found a spot in a basement hallway and leaned against a wall, closing his eyes.

That was when Arjuna felt a tap on his shoulder. He opened his eyes slowly, prepared for the worst.

"You were never meant to be a blonde," Drona said, eyeing Arjuna's hair critically.

Arjuna relaxed, feeling that it was finally all right to let his guard down. "It's not completely blonde," he said. "Just lightened. It's my clever disguise, see?"

Drona laughed.

Arjuna tilted his head up at him. "How did you get in here?"

"I am the one who _taught _you how to sneak around without others seeing you, remember?" He sighed. "I was hoping that at least you would notice me."

Arjuna felt his cheeks burning. "You were following me and I didn't notice?"

"No, you did not."

"Oh, so… I fail?"

"In a sense, yes. If this turns out to be your wedding night, however, I can forgive you. Temporarily." He looked Arjuna up and down. "Are you really going to go through with this?"

"How did you find out?" Arjuna countered. "Don't tell me Ashwatthama told you."

"He did not… Until I noticed you standing on the arena floor and then asked him about it. So? How is it going?"

Arjuna frowned. "It's fine as long as nobody tries to talk to me. I can't understand the Panchalan that they're speaking."

"It is difficult to learn, isn't it?"

"Like you would know."

Drona raised one eyebrow. "You think I never had to learn?" He shook his head. "I grew up speaking three languages, two of which are dead now, and none of which are even remotely related to any strain of what we call Classical Panchalan." He scratched at his ear. "When I was eleven years old, I was brought to Kampilya, and taught only in Panchalan. All of the children in the king's palace, we were forced only to speak Panchalan. They would hit us if they caught us speaking or writing in any other language. So we learned fast. It was hard, but we did learn." He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe that is what I should have done with you. Instead of giving you all of those books and audio discs, I should have just beaten you." He paused, then laughed when he saw the look on Arjuna's face. "I am joking."

Arjuna wondered if he was also joking about being beaten for speaking the wrong language when he was a child. Panchala was a scary place, Arjuna thought, not for the first time. "I should get going," he said. "I need to be with them when they leave together." He paused, then said, "When I get married, will you be there, please? At the wedding?"

"I would be honored."

"Thank you."

"Whether there is a wedding or not," Drona said gravely, "you should be praying for forgiveness right now. I understand that your mother forbid you to try for Draupadi's hand, did she not?"

"Yes. But--"

"No 'but'. To disobey your mother is a grave sin."

Arjuna sighed. "Listen, if I make it through this, I swear that I will never, ever disobey a single word that my mother says ever again. I swear on the Lord's name."

Drona was silent for a moment, then he said, "You must be careful about what types of vows you make using the Lord's name, Arjuna. The gods are listening. They will hold you to that."

"I know."

Drona squeezed Arjuna's shoulder. "I will be watching you from the stands," he said. "Do not mess this up."

"I won't," Arjuna said. "I promise. I won't."

* * *

II.

The groom-choosing dragged on into the afternoon. An endless string of princes stepped forward to take Pinakin, but not a single one of them could lift it. Arjuna watched the proceedings from his position on the arena floor, standing stiffly in line with all the other Panchalan naval soldiers. His attention began to wander as the sun sank from the sky. He was more daydreaming about what Draupadi's hair would smell like than he was paying attention to the princely suitors in front of him, when suddenly Dhristadyumna read a name that snapped Arjuna out of his reverie.

Arjuna didn't hear what title Dhristadyumna said, but as soon as the name _Karna_ slapped against his ears, Arjuna was instantly alert, his eyes focused on the entrance to the arena. Karna was striding toward Pinakin, dressed as resplendently as any of the royal princes that had come before him. The crowd watched in hushed silence.

Karna stood before Dhristadyumna and bowed low. Then he turned slightly and bowed to Drupada and Draupadi. Draupadi folded her hands in her lap and gazed down at him. Her face was kept carefully neutral, but Arjuna could see the distaste in her eyes, even from a distance. For a long, long moment, Draupadi made no move. Karna held himself in his bow silently, and the crowd waited, also silently. Finally, slowly, Draupadi nodded.

Karna straightened his back. "Thank you," he said. It was the first time that any of the contestants had spoken to Draupadi. Then he reached down and pulled up Pinakin as if it were nothing at all.

The collective gasp of the crowd sounded thunderous in Arjuna's ears. Ignoring the reactions he was getting, however, Karna straddled the bow, resting one end of Pinakin against the inside of his foot, and strung it quickly. Then he paused for a moment, scanning the sky for the telltale metallic gleam of the spinning drone high above them.

Dhristadyumna, saying nothing, took an arrow from a quiver that one of his attendants was holding, and handed it to Karna. Karna bowed again, received the arrow, and loaded it onto the bow. He lifted Pinakin up to his chest, leaned back, and aimed at the sky.

Karna had released his arrow before Arjuna even had time to blink. High in the sky above the arena, the target drone exploded in a cloud of flame and shredded metal.

The applause from the crowd was instant and thunderous. Arjuna could see that even the naval soldiers on either side of him were clapping with all of their might, but he refused on principal to join them. He stood and glared at Karna sullenly. Arjuna watched Karna reverently unstring and put down Pinakin, straighten up and beam happily at the crowd, then turn expectantly toward Draupadi. "Your Highness," he said.

But Draupadi, slowly, shook her head.

The cheering and applause began to die down.

Karna extended his hand to her. "Your Highness," he repeated, humbly.

"_No_," Draupadi said.

And then the cheering and applause abruptly ceased altogether.

"No, I will not marry the low-born son of a weaponsmith," Draupadi said, her sharp, clear voice echoing across the arena.

The crowd was utterly silent. Karna stood for a moment, at first appearing bewildered, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Then, slowly, he lowered his trembling, outstretched hand. Arjuna watched him, fascinated, unable to look away. Outwardly, Karna's appearance did not change. But inwardly… Arjuna could practically see the fires of rage burning in Karna's eyes. For a moment, Arjuna allowed himself to wince inwardly with sympathy. He thought that he would rather die than have to suffer a humiliation as great as what Karna was experiencing right before his eyes.

Slowly, Karna turned and walked off the arena floor. He moved stiffly, awkwardly. Arjuna could see him fighting to suppress his rage. His cheeks were flushed bright red and angry. His arms were stiff and trembling. He was on fire, burning with outrage at his humiliation.

That Karna, Arjuna thought. He did not seem one to take insults lightly.

Dhristadyumna watched Karna silently walk toward the exit of the arena. Then Dhristadyumna coughed, cleared his throat, and turned his attention back to the reader that he was holding. "The king of Hastinapura," he called. "Duryodhana." Another aide behind Dhristadyumna launched a new drone into the air.

Duryodhana was striding out onto the arena floor before Karna had finished leaving. Duryodhana met Karna halfway, paused, and placed his hand on Karna's shoulder. He leaned in close and said something to Karna that Arjuna couldn't hear. Karna nodded slowly, and his stiff shoulders seemed to relax slightly. Then Duryodhana lifted his hand and continued walking out toward Pinakin, as Karna exited the arena.

Duryodhana bowed to Dhristadyumna, then bowed to Draupadi. Draupadi nodded at him, granting him permission to continue. Arjuna sniggered silently. He knew that he shouldn't be proud of it, but he was looking forward to seeing Duryodhana, for whom everything had always come so easily, fail to even be able to lift Pinakin off the ground.

In fact, Arjuna was so busy anticipating Duryodhana's failure that it took him a good several seconds to realize that Duryodhana had already picked up the bow and was confidently stringing it.

The crowd was silent, shocked. Arjuna glanced quickly at Draupadi, and saw her sitting perfectly still, her eyes wide, her mouth forming a perfect round _O _of surprise. He saw Drupada staring down at Duryodhana with an expression of shocked disbelief. Arjuna glanced around the arena audience and saw Drupada's facial expression almost perfectly mirrored on thousands of faces.

_How, _Arjuna thought, _how?!_

His eyes were drawn helplessly back to Duryodhana. Duryodhana had loaded an arrow and pulled back the bow, aiming for the sky. He was scanning the sky above the arena, searching for the elusive drone. Arjuna saw Pinakin tremble slightly in Duryodhana's grasp. Duryodhana's hand slipped, but then he tightened his grip again, firmly.

_It's fighting him_, Arjuna realized. Could anybody else see that? Arjuna wasn't sure. But he didn't just see it, he could feel it in his bones. He could feel Pinakin's struggle echoing, resonating with the part of _him _that was inhuman, with the part of him that was deva-born. _It doesn't want to be held by Duryodhana. It's trying to reject him. But it can't fight him…_

Why? How?! Arjuna felt his heart doing flip-flops in his chest. This couldn't be. This shouldn't be.

Suddenly Duryodhana pulled back the bowstring all the way. He had spotted the airborne drone. With a decisive snap, he let his arrow fly.

But Pinakin, however, managed one last defiant wriggle at the last moment. And Duryodhana's arrow went sailing through the sky, cleanly missing the whirling drone.

The crowd let out a long, low, disappointed gasp.

Duryodhana lowered the bow slowly, his eyes seething with rage. But he held his composure, unstrung the bow, and bowed graciously to Dhristadyumna. "Thank you," Dhristadyumna said. And Duryodhana slowly exited the arena, to the sound of delayed but thunderous applause.

Arjuna could not join in the applause. Something was deeply wrong. He knew in his bones that he had just witnessed something deeply wrong. Hadn't anybody else seen it? Arjuna turned his head toward the audience, searching for Bhima, wanting to see the reaction on his face. But Bhima had already left his seat. Dhristadyumna was already calling his name; the arena floor shook as Bhima strode out toward Pinakin.

Arjuna watched Bhima pick up the bow and string it easily. He inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. He could almost feel a palpable sense of relief vibrating off Pinakin, too. The bow seemed glad to be held in devakin hands. But even though the bow was willing, Bhima still didn't have the right aim. His arrow zipped nearly a hair next to the airborne drone, but did not strike it. Again, the crowd gasped with disappointment as Bhima shook his head, unstrung the bow, bowed to Dhristadyumna, and exited.

By now the crowd was getting tense, restless. It was nearly the end of the ceremony, and so far Draupadi had rejected the only suitor who had passed her father's test. Now there was only one suitor left, and it was someone whom nobody honestly expected to be able to complete the required task.

Arjuna listened to Dhristadyumna read his brother's name, and watched Yudhisthira walking up to Pinakin, pausing to bow to Dhristadyumna and Draupadi. Arjuna felt his stomach fluttering nervously. He wanted his brother to succeed. But at the same time, he also didn't.

Well, at least he didn't want his brother to be completely humiliated, Arjuna decided.

Yudhisthira took a deep breath, bent down, and lifted up Pinakin. It lifted so easily that Yudhisthira momentarily stumbled backwards, a comical expression of surprise on his face. There was nervous laughter in the audience; Yudhisthira grinned, a bit sheepishly, and quickly strung the bow. He seemed more surprised than anyone that he had been able to lift the bow.

But as soon as Yudhisthira took his arrow and aimed, Arjuna knew that it was a lost cause. Yudhisthira was inexperienced with archery, and it showed in his stance. He released his arrow, and it flew close enough to the drone to earn Yudhisthira the respect of many better archers who were watching the proceedings, whether in the crowds or via the broadcast cameras. But it was still a clean miss.

The audience applauded regardless. So did Arjuna. His brothers had brought great honor to their family by merely being able to touch Pinakin. However, the applause died quickly, because everyone in the audience soon realized the truth. Yudhisthira had been the last registered suitor, and Draupadi still had no husband.

Dhristadyumna handed his electronic reader off to an aide, then stepped into the center of the arena. "Is there no one," he asked, throwing out his hands in supplication, "who is worthy of my sister?"

Total silence greeted Dhristadyumna's plea. Any eligible prince or king in the audience had already tried his hand at the bow. And all had failed.

So Arjuna stepped forward, breaking rank with the other naval soldiers, and bowed to Dhristadyumna. "I am worthy," he said.

* * *

III.

The uproar in the crowd was immediate and deafening. Yudhisthira buried his face in his hands and groaned. "Is that…?"

"Oh yeah," Bhima confirmed. "That's him. I don't think that anybody else can see it, though."

"I can't look," Yudhisthira gasped, but he lifted his face out of his hands and forced himself to look anyway. He could hear the jeers coming from all around him. Cries of _lowborn _and _unworthy_ were echoing across the arena. "Arjuna," he mumbled to himself, "what in the five hells do you think you're doing?!"

"I'll kill him," Bhima said. "If Mother doesn't first."

"Don't tell me that Mother is watching this on the console--"

"She said that she wouldn't watch, remember?" Sahadeva said. "She said she wanted it to be a surprise."

Yudhisthira grit his teeth. Well, he and Bhima had failed to provide that surprise.

"By the way," Bhima said to Sahadeva, conversationally, "I'll kill you too."

Sahadeva sat, smiling serenely, and did not even bother to deny his involvement in the matter.

Meanwhile, Draupadi had stood up and silenced the crowd with a wave of her hands. "Let him try," she said. And the crowd silently watched as the unnamed naval soldier bent down and picked up Pinakin as easily as if it were as light as a feather.

* * *

IV.

Arjuna lifted Pinakin and aimed his arrow. Pinakin felt smooth and light and _right _in his hands. It wanted to be in his hands. Arjuna could feel it.

"Please, Lord," he whispered to the sky as he spotted the drone and took aim. "Please please please guide this arrow. I swear that after this I will never disobey my mother again," he repeated for good measure. "I swear."

Suddenly Arjuna felt a strange shiver crawling up the base of his spine. The devakin markings on the back of his neck burned, briefly, for a single moment. And Arjuna realized that his promise had been heard – and duly noted.

_All right then,_ he thought. He pulled back Pinakin's string, and released his arrow.

There was a pop and a bright flash, as the drone exploded high above his head.

* * *

V.

Draupadi had run down to the arena floor and was throwing her garland of flowers around the soldier's neck before Duryodhana could even blink. He sat still in his seat, stunned and cold. He could hear the jeering starting up again in the crowds around him, and resisted the temptation to join in.

Duryodhana clenched his hands in his lap. He didn't even know who the soldier was, but he had never felt the urge to wring someone's neck so strongly before.

Suddenly Karna's hand was on his shoulder, squeezing it. "What is going on here?!" Karna hissed into Duryodhana's ear.

"Drupada's daughter just threw herself at a common soldier like a lowborn whore," Duryodhana answered, through gritted teeth. "That's what's going on here." And apparently, the crowd was having none of it. Princes and kings were starting to climb down from the stands. Men were running onto the arena floor. Dhristadyumna grasped his sister's hand and was trying to pull her toward an exit. Her new husband followed quickly, still holding Pinakin in his hands. Duryodhana wondered if they would make it out before the riot started.

"But that's not a soldier," Karna said. "Are you blind?! _That's Arjuna_."

Duryodhana blinked, then risked tearing his eyes away from the angry mob spilling out onto the arena floor long enough to look at Karna. "No it's not."

"Yes it is. _Look_. Can't you see?"

Duryodhana turned back toward the arena, and looked with all his might. He caught a glimpse of the soldier ducking behind one of Dhristadyumna's guards. The soldier's face seemed to flicker and shift, like a visage made of flowing liquid. Looking at the soldier's face for more than a second made Duryodhana's head hurt.

Aha, so that was the game, then. It was an illusion.

Duryodhana suddenly stood up and glanced around quickly. Half of his brothers had joined the mob on the arena floor. Dusshasana was sitting and watching him carefully, waiting to see what he would do. Ashwatthama and his father were, not surprisingly, nowhere to be found.

_If either of them had any part of this…_ Duryodhana forced himself to not finish the thought, lest he become blinded with rage.

"Look," Karna said, pointing toward the arena floor again. "Dhristadyumna's guards are heading for the south exit." But it was a fake-out, Duryodhana knew, as soon as he heard Karna say it. Karna squinted, his sharp eyes scanning the riot below them. "There's an exit below and to the north of us. They're going to slip out that way. Why doesn't anybody see--?" He cut himself off, and frowned. "Oh, he's good. With that illusion trick. He's _good. _They're going to get away clean."

"Karna."

"Yes?"

"Don't let them."

* * *

VI.

The sound of the riot was even worse when heard from inside the tunnels. "This way," the soldier said, and Draupadi followed quickly. Arjuna, a breathless step behind her, paused just long enough to glance behind him – they were still not being followed, not yet – and then kept running.

"We're almost clear," the soldier said, not to Draupadi, but to whoever was listening on the other end of her earpiece. She listened for a moment, then without breaking her stride turned her head and said, "The hoverer is waiting for us."

They were running, still running toward the bright patch of daylight at the end of the exit tunnel. The soldier listened to something else spoken from her earpiece, then suddenly ground her feet to a halt. Draupadi and Arjuna froze behind her. She turned toward Draupadi and said, "We have to find another exit. The hoverer's surrounded."

"This way," Draupadi said, quickly turning back the way that they had come. "There's an emergency passage that--"

"Wait," Arjuna said. He wasn't moving. Because he had already seen the shadow that suddenly blocked the patch of daylight at the end of the tunnel. Someone had already entered the passage and was heading toward them.

"You lying, deceitful…" Karna was rolling up his sleeves. Not a good sign. Others were filtering in behind him – Duryodhana's brothers, and the princes from Abhira who had been sitting near them. A miniature mob to be sure, but certainly large enough to cut off Arjuna's exit. "You have no right to get away with this, _Your Highness._"

"Arjuna hasn't broken any rules," Draupadi said, quickly stepping in front of Karna.

"No, he only lied about his identity, impersonated a military soldier, carried on an embarrassing farce in front of the rulers of dozens of planets, shamed his family, and had to resort to underhanded treachery to participate in your groom-choosing."

Draupadi stared up at him, utterly un-intimidated. "You, sir, are neither a judge, nor a priest. You're not even _royalty. _You have no right to reprimand me or my husband--"

"I'm here on behalf of the King of Hastinapura--"

"—And if you knew your place you would _not interrupt me_, you worm."

Arjuna saw the fire flaring up in Karna's eyes. But Karna turned his attention away from Draupadi and focused his rage on Arjuna. "Are you going to stand there and use this woman as a shield, you coward?!"

"No," Arjuna said, trying to step around Draupadi.

But she grasped his arm and held him back. "Don't let him bait you," she said.

"I'm not baiting," said Karna evenly.

"We just can't let you pass," one of the Abhirans said.

"You've insulted all of us with this farce," Durmada added, stepping up beside Karna. "Draupadi should go back and choose an honest husband. We can't let her leave with you."

Draupadi stepped right up to Durmada and hissed angrily, "I think you've misunderstood the point of a groom-choosing. _It's my choice._"

"And you would choose a liar?" Karna challenged. "You--"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, however, because that was when Arjuna's fist connected with his jaw.

Within an eyeblink the two of them were on the ground, tussling; then back on their feet, trading blows. "Stop it, stop it!" Draupadi screamed, and she lunged for them, hoping to grab Arjuna and pull him back. But the crowd pushed her away, cheering and clapping and egging the fight on. Karna, older and taller and stronger, immediately had Arjuna on the defensive. Arjuna's feet danced quickly, dodging blows as best he could, but he was slowly, inexorably being pushed toward the exit of the tunnel.

The crowd surged, and the brawl spilled out into the sunlight. Now they were both on the ground, practically wrestling, pulling at hair and growling and biting. Arjuna felt Karna's knee connect with his stomach. Instinctively, he tried to kick back, but he was being pinned to the ground. The sunlight was dazzling. There were too many faces watching him. A crowd – a mob – had gathered. Arjuna could hear them shouting, and jeering. He wasn't sure if he was the one being cheered or jeered. Then Arjuna realized that one of his arms was still free. He swung up blindly, trying to smash into Karna's face; but Karna caught his fist, laughed, and slammed Arjuna's arm back to the ground, then held it there, twisting it painfully. Arjuna felt his vision starting to swim. He looked up at Karna's face, saw the blind ugly hatred burning in his eyes, and felt, for the first time, afraid. And still his arm was twisting, twisting. Arjuna grit his teeth and forced himself not to cry out in pain. He wouldn't. He couldn't. He wouldn't give Karna the satisfaction.

Arjuna was only vaguely aware that his back was beginning to arch with pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, clawing at the cement ground with his other hand. Just when he thought that the pain in his twisted arm had become unbearable, just when he finally felt the inevitable scream welling up in his chest, suddenly the pressure was gone. Karna had let go of Arjuna's arm. Arjuna felt a split second of relief – and confusion. His eyes fluttered open and he had just enough time to wonder what was happening, before he felt Karna's hands suddenly seize his neck.

And then, Arjuna couldn't breathe.

He struggled and tried to gasp, panicked. His vision swam; he tried to look up at Karna's face, at Karna's eyes, but could see nothing. His hands twitched. One arm was useless, cramped in pain. But his other arm was mobile, although Arjuna barely had the strength to lift it. He could hear screams in the crowd now, but didn't care. Slowly Arjuna lifted his arm, watching himself as though detached, as though from a dream. _An astra_, he thought, his hand hovering inches from Karna's burning face. At this close range, it would be a killing blow. But Arjuna didn't have time to think about that; he was already slipping down into the darkness. With his last thought, Arjuna struggled to remember what he had been taught. But the words wouldn't come. He could feel lightening crackling at his fingertips, then fizzling, fading away, slipping away from him. His vision grew dark. His thoughts stilled.

But then the pressure on his neck suddenly vanished.

Air flooded back into Arjuna's throat and he gasped, choking, coughing violently. He rolled over onto his side, his vision swimming. His eyes focused just long enough to catch a glimpse of Karna, suddenly thrown several feet away from Arjuna and doubled over in pain, as Bhima's clenched fist hovered over him. Then there were arms grabbing at Arjuna, pulling him up. Arjuna stumbled, weakly, unable to support his own weight. But then there was darkness and the smell of perfume; Arjuna realized that he was sitting down. No, he had been pushed down, and was now seated inside a hoverer, with Draupadi's arms around him. He heard the crowd roaring, and could feel the hoverer trembling.

Arjuna glanced up, and saw Yudhisthira's face framed in the window of the hoverer. "Are you all right?" Yudhisthira asked, quick and to the point.

"I'll… be fine," Arjuna gasped.

Yudhisthira stared at him, penetratingly. "Are you sure?"

"Yes…"

"Shall I take him to the hospital?" the unseen driver in the front of the hoverer asked.

"No," Draupadi said quickly. "Get us back to the palace. That's the safest location right now."

"Hurry," Yudhisthira said, then ducked back into the crowd, presumably to deal with the riot that Arjuna imagined Bhima was now doing his best to incite.

The hoverer quickly lifted off and high into the air. Arjuna felt his stomach doing flip-flops; he suddenly pushed himself away from Draupadi and doubled over, struggling to keep his lunch from regurgitating itself all over his lap. Arjuna felt a moment of panic when he feared that he was about to lose the battle against his lunch; but mercifully, the moment passed, and Arjuna felt his stomach calming.

So Arjuna slowly sat up straight, then leaned back in his seat. His breathing was still coming in uneven gasps. But then Draupadi was beside him again, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. She pressed her cheek against his, reaching up to stroke his hair.

"I'm sorry," Arjuna mumbled, thickly.

"You should be," Draupadi said, but not unkindly. "Also, you dropped Pinakin back there. The Lord will not be pleased."

Arjuna closed his eyes, losing himself in the touch of her cool hands, in the scent of her perfume. "I love you," he said.

She didn't say anything in response. Instead, Draupadi gently turned his face toward hers, then leaned in close, and pressed her lips against his. They kissed, long and slow.

* * *

VII.

Kunti had discovered years ago that she had no stomach for suspense. Of course, she could endure suspense when it was absolutely necessary, as it often had been when she had been a queen. Madri had used to tease her because she had secretly developed the very un-queen-like habit of biting her nails when the tension became unbearable. All of Kunti's worst memories were of suspense. She remembered the day decades ago when she had spent three sleepless nights sitting in front of the media console, watching Drupada's fleet perform their "practice maneuvers" on the edge of Kuru's rimcloud, fearing that the "diplomatic negotiations" that they had invited Pandu to were only a pretense, fearing that any moment the media stream would suddenly be interrupted to broadcast an image of Drupada slicing off her husband's head and laughing about it. She also remembered one long night in the forest so many years ago, one of the nights when Pandu had fallen ill and neither she nor Madri had believed that he would survive to see the morning, when she and Madri had spent hours covering him with ice and trying to force him to drink water and trying to prevent the fever from cooking his brains, while Yudhisthira and Bhima, the latter still an infant only, had slept in the back of the cave, blissfully unaware. Kunti remembered the suspense she had felt riding back into Hastinapura for the first time in thirteen years, sitting beside Pandu in the front of the run-down automobile that they had begged off a wandering priest. She even remembered the suspense that she had felt what seemed like hundreds of years ago, at her own groom-choosing ceremony, sitting on a throne with a garland of flowers in her hands, surveying the young princes seated in front of her nervously, wondering if among them there would be one whom she could happily sleep beside for the rest of her life.

No, Kunti couldn't stand suspense, not even _joyful_ suspense. Contradictorily, however, she also didn't like to spoil happy surprises. Of course, she would be happy whether Yudhisthira or Duryodhana married Draupadi in the end. And of course she was rooting for Yudhisthira, because he was her son and she loved him, and because she knew better than anyone how desperately Yudhisthira needed a strong woman like Draupadi at his side. "But," she had told Gandhari, "as long as Draupadi marries one of the two of them, there will be peace between Kuru and Panchala. And that's the most important thing."

Gandhari had turned her blindfolded eyes toward Kunti and said, "You are a queen before a mother, then?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

Gandhari laughed and leaned her head against Kunti's shoulder. The two of them were sitting in a shaded garden outside Gandhari's quarters in Drupada's palace, where they had secluded themselves all day. Away from the media console, away from the audio broadcasts, away from everything. This was the vow that they had made to each other: They would not attend the groom-choosing. They would neither watch nor listen to the groom-choosing. They would stay in the garden together and wait until either Duryodhana or Yudhisthira came to greet them, with Draupadi on his arm.

"Besides," Kunti said, "I can't take much more of a cold war. I'm too old for this."

"I won't stand for you saying that you're old," Gandhari sniffed. "Besides, what would that make me?"

Now it was Kunti's turn to laugh. She loved Gandhari, and she loved being with Gandhari. She remembered that many years ago, the two of them had started off in a bad place. But they had both watched Duryodhana take Yudhisthira under his wing, and eventually, whether consciously or subconsciously, had begun to follow suit, growing closer and closer together as the years passed. They were rather alike, Kunti had discovered slowly. After she had moved to Indraprastha, Kunti had missed Gandhari more than anything.

The day had passed slowly. The sun was low in the sky, now, and Kunti suspected that the groom-choosing must already be finished. Soon Yudhisthira would be back. But with or without Draupadi? Kunti sighed. Despite her best efforts to avoid suspense, the suspense was still killing her.

So instead, she focused her thoughts on Arjuna. He had spent the entire day pouting in his room, like a child. Around noon Kunti had knocked on his door and nearly demanded that he join her for lunch, but the guards posted outside his room had told her to leave, since Arjuna had _insisted _that he was not to be disturbed.

Kunti still winced at the memory. She winced at the memory of her harsh words to Arjuna the previous night. She winced in shame and embarrassment at the thought of him holed up in his quarters and pouting like a spoiled child. The she sighed and thought morosely, not for the first time, that this was largely her fault. She had always indulged Arjuna, and treated him like her little baby. She could hardly blame him for still acting like a baby, then.

Gandhari tapped her watch, held it up to her ear, listened to it read her the time, then frowned. "Any moment now," she said.

"Any moment now," Kunti echoed.

They sat in silence, holding hands, for a long time.

And then, finally, Kunti heard footsteps.

She froze, squeezing Gandhari's hand, feeling Gandhari squeeze back. Kunti dared not turn her head to see who it was. But then, suddenly, she heard his voice. "Mother, Mother!"

Kunti let out a long, slow sigh, and let go of Gandhari's hand. Oh. It was only Arjuna. Well, at least he was out of his room. And he sounded much more cheerful than he had been the previous night. "Yes, Arjuna?"

"Mother, look what I've got!"

Kunti resisted the urge to roll her eyes, even if nobody would have seen it. More childish behavior. This was the last thing that she wanted to hear from him right now. "Whatever it is, Arjuna," she said, "You must share it with your brothers."

The footsteps abruptly ground to a halt. That was when Kunti finally turned her head, saw Arjuna and Draupadi standing a few feet behind her, and said, "Oh."

Draupadi bowed her head once, briefly, to Kunti. Then she stood and regarded Kunti carefully. Arjuna was grinning sheepishly, but there was a suspicious bruise spreading across the right side of his face. And on his neck. And for some reason, he was wearing a Panchalan naval uniform. And his hair was dyed three shades too light. "All right, so, let me explain," he said quickly.

By now Gandhari had stood up and had turned her face toward the sound of Arjuna's voice. "Kunti," she said. "Care to tell me what I'm looking at?"

"You don't want to know." Kunti narrowed her eyes. "Arjuna, did you disobey my order?"

"Yes," Arjuna said, nodding his head. "Yes, I did." He stepped forward, and grasped Kunti's hands. "But I made a vow, Mother. I made a vow to the gods. I swore that I would never disobey you again." He squeezed her hands tightly. "And I'm not going to."

For a moment, there was silence in the garden. Then Draupadi finally said, "Wait, what?"

* * *

VIII.

They had managed to escape the riot, but the blood wouldn't stop.

Dusshasana pressed another wad of bandages against Karna's ear, and the cloth instantly began to turn red. "We need to get medical attention now," Dusshasana said. "Look at me. I'm getting blood all over my clothes."

"Your Majesty, we still can't move," one of Drupada's soldiers said, not to Dusshasana, but to Duryodhana, who was sitting on the other side of Karna and scowling. "The protestors have halted traffic, even at this altitude--"

" 'Protestors' isn't quite the right word for them," Duryodhana snapped. He and Dusshasana had managed to drag Karna into the back of a hoverer, one of many that had swooped into the riot in order to rescue the foreign dignitaries entangled in the mob. But now the hoverer, trapped in a traffic snarl in mid-air, was unable to move forward to safety. Duryodhana hadn't seen where Drupada's soldiers had taken Yudhisthira and Bhima, and he didn't care. He _had _seen Karna literally knocked flying when Bhima had punched him in the side of his head, however – and Bhima hadn't been holding back. Right now, Karna's injuries were Duryodhana's primary concern.

Duryodhana leaned over toward Karna. He held up three fingers in front of Karna's face. "All right, how many fingers this time?"

"Three," Karna croaked. But his gaze was unfocused. His face still wore an odd expression of bafflement and surprise. Duryodhana had seen Karna wearing that same expression on his face that moment that Bhima had knocked him flying, and his face hadn't changed since.

Duryodhana remembered the first aid that he had learned from Bhisma, remembered that in a situation like this, it was important to keep the injured party talking. "How many fingers now?"

"Four."

"What's your name?"

"Karna."

"What's my name?"

"…Uh." Karna blinked at Duryodhana, trying to focus. "Du… Du?"

"We _really _have to get him to a hospital," Dusshasana said.

"No hospidle," Karna mumbled. "Can't… What'll I tell Shrutakiirti?" Suddenly his eyes lit up, wide and bright and alert. Then he pushed Dusshasana away and buried his face in his hands. "Oh God, oh God," he moaned. "What've I done?"

Duryodhana watched this new development with silent interest. Dusshasana, however, answered patiently, "Well, you were attacked by Bhima."

Ignoring Dusshasana, Karna lifted his face out of his hands and turned his gaze toward Duryodhana. His eyes were bright and feverish. "I almost killed him," he said.

"Who, Arjuna?" Duryodhana was suddenly very curious to know how Karna had gone from having a brain-addling concussion to being nearly perfect lucid in the space of a single heartbeat. He also wanted to know how the blood gushing from Karna's ear could have stopped so suddenly. But he didn't ask about that. He mentally filed away the information for further research later.

"I was going to kill him. I would have killed him." Karna hung his head in shame. "I'm a disgrace. How can I face Vrishasena and Susena?" His face crumpled in grief. "Forgive me, Lord. I…" He choked back a sob.

Inwardly, Duryodhana sighed with impatience. The last thing that he needed was Karna's overzealous religious beliefs getting in the way of a perfectly good homicidal grudge. That was the problem with Karna, Duryodhana thought. Although the man was capable of holding epic grudges – and his humiliation at the groom-choosing today had certainly done much to feed his grudge against both Arjuna and Draupadi – his damned persistent sense of moral self-righteousness always managed to keep his rage in check.

But Duryodhana did not say this. Instead, he leaned forward, and placed his hand on top of Karna's head. It was an ancient gesture of blessing. "You have nothing to be ashamed of," he said. "I asked you to fight for me, and you did. You were noble and brave. If your sons were old enough to understand, I'm sure that they would be proud of you."

Karna looked up at Duryodhana slowly. He was giving Duryodhana a funny look. "But I almost strangled your cousin," he said, slowly.

Duryodhana removed his hand from Karna's head. "In the old days," he said solemnly, "an act as deceitful and cowardly as what Arjuna pulled today would have been punishable by death. Any royal would have been within his rights to challenge Arjuna to a duel to the death." He reached out, and touched Karna's chin lightly. Karna winced from the pain, but still tilted his head to meet Duryodhana's gaze. "You _are _royalty now. Today, you would have been within in your rights to take Arjuna's life. He deserves to die for his dishonor."

Karna trembled for a moment, then tore his eyes away from Duryodhana's gaze. "It's a little late for that, now."

"So we let him get away. Big deal. Yudhisthira's family will never recover from the shame."

Minutes passed, although it felt like hours. Dusshasana said nothing, but continued to dab at the blood that leaked from Karna's ear. Karna merely sat, not resisting Dusshasana's administrations, staring at nothing in particular, lost deep in his own morose thoughts.

Finally Duryodhana turned his head back toward them, regarded Dusshasana and Karna solemnly for a moment, then slowly let his face break out into a grin. "Some vacation, huh?"

Karna, despite himself, chuckled. Dusshasana shook his head and said, "Between the riots and the wedding scandal, I'm sure that Drupada has his hands full."

"I bet he'll never invite a single Kuru back to his planet ever again," Duryodhana said cheerfully. He turned his head toward the single window in the back of the heavily armored hoverer, through which he could see clouds of smoke rising from the fires that rioters had started in the street below. "Not after this at least."

"At least the day couldn't end any worse," Dusshasana said. Then he paused and added thoughtfully, "Well, admittedly, if the day had ended with Arjuna dead, maybe that _would_ have been worse…"

Karna buried his face in his hands and moaned.

Duryodhana shot Dusshasana a withering glare. He opened his mouth to say something nasty, but then stopped himself, suddenly distracted by the sound of his comm ringing. He pulled it off his belt and flipped it open impatiently. It wasn't a voice call, but a type-message. From Durmukha. Duryodhana's eyes flickered quickly over the message.

"Who is it?" Dusshasana asked.

"It's Durmukha. He and Durmada made it back to the palace. Durmukha says…" Duryodhana trailed off, his voice dying in his throat.

Then, suddenly, he threw back his head and laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. But he had to laugh, because what else could he do in the face of such a cruel cosmic joke?

"What?" Dusshasana demanded. "What is it?"

"Draupadi's marriage scandal," Duryodhana said, once he'd gotten a hold of himself again. "It just became five times more scandalous."

* * *

IX.

"You _can't_," Dhristadyumna said, again. "It doesn't work that way."

"I don't see why not," Draupadi countered, calmly. "You and Sikhandhi could very well marry multiple wives. Why can't I have more than one husband?"

"Because you're a woman--"

"That's a real sexist double standard right there."

"Also," Dhristadyumna continued, pointing one finger at Arjuna, "He is clearly insane, and this is the dumbest thing that I have ever heard of."

Arjuna opened and closed his mouth, angrily. Fortunately, Yudhisthira stepped up to speak on his behalf. "A sacred vow is a sacred vow," Yudhisthira explained, calmly. "Arjuna has to honor his vow. And as his brothers, we have to support him in this."

"But Arjuna's vow _is stupid._"

"True though that may be," Yudhisthira agreed, causing Arjuna to wince as he overheard, "These things happen for a reason."

"Great," Nakula leaned over and whispered into Arjuna's ear. "Now he's going to get metaphysical on us." They were seated – Arjuna and three of his brothers, at least – in Drupada's most private study, surrounded by books so ancient that they were kept locked in climate-controlled cabinets, wall hangings from worlds so far away that Arjuna couldn't even identify them, vases, and a handful of statues that Arjuna suspected had been plundered from Kuru several hundred years ago. As well as security cameras and humming computer equipment everywhere. And several console screens arranged along one wall, all of them switched off, watching the room blankly and silently.

Yudhisthira wasn't sitting anymore. He was standing and had neatly wriggled in between the arguing twins Draupadi and Dhristadyumna; while across from them, Drupada sat and listened and nodded, frowning, deep in thought.

Arjuna tuned out the ongoing argument, watching his brother and Draupadi without listening to what they were saying, watching them standing side-by-side, now allied against an increasingly exasperated Dhristadyumna. _Can I do this? _Arjuna thought. _Can I share my first wife with my brothers? _It wasn't as though he had any choice, though. The gods had heard his vow to obey his mother's every word, and they were going to hold him to it.

"So what happens if you break your vow?" Sahadeva suddenly whispered, leaning across Nakula's chest. "Is it really that important?"

"Uh…"

"Like, you'll be struck by a bolt of lightning, or something?" Sahadeva was smiling in a funny way. "That would be neat."

"Surely nothing that dire," a low, growling voice said. Everyone in the room fell silent, and turned to look. Ashwatthama had just entered the room, and behind him was an extremely hairy, wild man dressed in rags. "No lightning," the man in rags continued. "He'll probably just go blind. Or his nose will fall off. The latter would be more statistically likely."

"I'm sorry," Ashwatthama said quickly, bowing to Drupada, "but he insisted on speaking to you, Your Majesty."

Total silence. Everyone was frozen, staring with mild horror at the filthy new arrival in the room.

Everyone, that is, save for Drupada. He stood up immediately, grinning beneath his long beard. "Vyasa!" he exclaimed, striding over to grasp the wild man's hands in his. Arjuna watched everyone else in the room trying to discreetly sidle farther away from Vyasa, save for Ashwatthama. Arjuna tried to catch Ashwatthama's gaze, trying to ask him a question with his eyes, but Ashwatthama was looking away from him. Arjuna didn't know what to think. He could feel something about Vyasa's aura that was so strong that it almost made him shiver.

"I heard what happened," Vyasa said, briefly embracing Drupada, then pulling away. Then he turned his head toward Arjuna. "You made a vow, didn't you?"

Arjuna nodded.

"That was as much your will as it was the will of the Lord." Vyasa turned his attention to Draupadi. "This marriage is your destiny. It has been determined long before you were born."

Draupadi crossed her arms over her chest. "And who are you, again?"

Drupada shook his head at her sharply, and she reluctantly unfolded her arms, but gave no other sign of backing down. "If Vyasa agrees," Drupada said, "then it is settled. There will be five weddings, starting tomorrow."

"What? What?!" Dhristadyumna looked furious. "Father, you can't--!!"

Arjuna listened to Dhristadyumna yelling, and both Draupadi and Yudhisthira trying to calm him. Finally Arjuna decided that he had had enough. He stood, ignored the curious look that Nakula shot him, and slipped discreetly to the other side of the room. He tapped Ashwatthama on the shoulder and whispered, "So, who is this Vyasa?"

Ashwatthama shrugged. "I don't know. But he ran into me and demanded to see the king, and he didn't seem like the type of person to refuse."

* * *

X.

Yudhisthira still didn't quite believe it when he woke up the following morning and realized that it was his wedding day. He laid in his bed, staring at the foreign ceiling above, for as long as he dared. Then he rolled over and saw one of his attendants standing by his bedside, patiently holding a comm unit. A light on the comm unit was blinking, indicating that it had recorded messages.

"Thirty-two messages, Your Majesty," the attendant said.

Yudhisthira sat up in his bed and silently wondered how many of those messages were from Bhisma. Yudhisthira took the comm unit, briefly considered actually listening to the messages, then decided that it might be easier just to make some calls instead. "What time is it in Hastinapura?" he asked the attendant.

"Fourteen hundred hours and seven minutes."

"Mmm." He dialed on the comm with one hand while gesturing commands at his attendant with his other – Turn off the light. Open the curtains. Turn the media console on, muted, and point it to a news channel. Fetch breakfast. Fortunately, the attendant already knew the morning routine well.

Bhisma picked up the other end of the comm and immediately asked Yudhisthira, "Well?"

Yudhisthira pushed his sleep-tangled hair back behind his ears and asked, "Well, what?"

"Are you nervous?"

"How could I not be? It's not just a wedding, it's a scandal."

"Oh, Yudhisthira. It's been years since you deposited a scandal this good in my lap. I was beginning to think that you'd lost your touch."

Yudhisthira laughed, his voice still scratchy with sleep.

"I heard that you met with Vyasa," Bhisma suddenly said.

Yudhisthira sat up straight, startled. "You know him?"

"Yes, well. I wasn't aware that he was roaming around on Panchala, though." Bhisma paused. "So you did meet Vyasa?" he asked again.

"Briefly. Drupada seemed to know him." Yudhisthira sensed that he was being grilled for information, and he delivered as much as he could. His grandfather had trained him well, he realized ruefully. "Vyasa said that Arjuna's vow was the will of the gods, and that marrying us was Draupadi's destiny. Then he spoke to Drupada some more. I couldn't hear what he said though, I was handling Dhristadyumna. Then he made to leave, but he asked me if he could attend the wedding today. I asked him why, and he said that his sons would be there. So I agreed to invite him."

Bhisma drew in a long, slow breath. "His sons?"

"Yes, I'm very sure that he spoke of his sons. He didn't mention their names, though. Why? Do I know them?"

"I have a favor to ask of you," Bhisma said, instead of answering the question. "If you see Vyasa – and you will – tell him to remember our agreement."

Yudhisthira was silent for a moment, then asked, "Are you going to elaborate?"

"Do I sound like I'm going to elaborate?"

"…Probably not."

"How astute you are."

"I will tell him that you said that," Yudhisthira said, now with half of his concentration divided by watching the silent, muted headlines scrolls across the screen of his media console.

"Have a memorable wedding," Bhisma said. "And make it look good. Press from Hastinapura and Indraprastha will be there."

"I'm sorry that you can't be here."

"I'll be watching the broadcasts." Bhisma laughed, then added, "Oh, and Yudhisthira?"

"Yes?"

"_Enjoy yourself_, if that's not too much to ask."

"I'll try," Yudhisthira said, rather unconvincingly. "Love you," he said, before clicking off the comm unit. Then he stood and stared at the comm unit in his hand, silently dreading the call that he had to make next. Or would it be better to find Duryodhana and to speak with him in person? To say what, exactly? Yudhisthira wasn't sure. He hadn't seen Duryodhana since the groom-choosing ceremony. He had heard that Duryodhana had only managed to return to Drupada's palace late the previous night, after most of the guests had already gone to sleep. Yudhisthira had no idea how Duryodhana was reacting to the news.

_I should do this in person_, Yudhisthira decided, stepping out of his bed and patiently letting his attendants dress him. It didn't matter how late Duryodhana had gotten to bed the previous night; Yudhisthira knew that Duryodhana would already be awake. That was just the way that he was wired. Yudhisthira was much the same.

Unfortunately, nearly a full battalion of Drupada's aides were waiting for Yudhisthira the moment that he stepped out of his quarters. "Today's schedule," one said, handing Yudhisthira an electronic reader. "Rehearsal luncheon begins in two hours. His Majesty has requested that you be fitted for your robes immediately."

"Here we go," Yudhisthira muttered under his breath. Then he handed off the reader to someone else and said, "I wish to speak with my cousin first. If you will notify him and escort me, that would be most appreciated."

The aide hesitated for a moment, then bowed low in agreement. Merely a few moments later, Yudhisthira was being escorted through one of Drupada's many gardens that connected the guest wings of the palace. It was a clear morning – a good omen – and already warm outside. A few birds made half-hearted attempts to trill lazily, but otherwise, the gardens, and the palace, were still largely silent.

Many of Duryodhana's brothers and servants were sharing suites, but Duryodhana had an expansive set of rooms all to himself. He was waiting in a drawing room with tea and fruit ready when Yudhisthira showed up. "Congratulations," was the first thing that he said, while pouring Yudhisthira some tea. "And what's with the army?"

"Oh." Yudhisthira had left the dozen aides that were following him well outside Duryodhana's suite, but Duryodhana had already seen them in the gardens. "They're sent by Drupada. To help me, I suppose."

"And to keep an eye on you, no doubt."

Yudhisthira did not sip his tea. "Yesterday…" he started, then trailed off, watching for Duryodhana's reaction.

Unfortunately, Duryodhana was giving no reaction whatsoever, keeping his face carefully neutral. He sat down across from Yudhisthira and began peeling a grape with his fingers, not eating it. "Yes?" he asked.

Yudhisthira wasn't sure what to say, so he finally bowed his head as low as he possibly could, and said, "I want to apologize on Arjuna's behalf."

Duryodhana didn't say anything, just sort of sighed out of his nose and picked up another grape, peeling it grumpily. "And that's all?"

Yudhisthira was making a conscious effort not to fidget nervously with the teacup in his hands. Of course it wasn't enough; of course there was plenty more that he should have been apologizing for. Nothing that was his fault, everything that had to do with the behavior of his brothers. Then again, Duryodhana had plenty to apologize for on his end, too. But Yudhisthira sensed that Duryodhana wasn't feeling particularly inclined toward apology at the moment. In fact, he was still seething, and no longer making any effort to hide it. "Well," Yudhisthira said, "about what happened between Arjuna and Karna--"

"That's finished," Duryodhana said, quickly, vehemently. "Completely finished. I talked to Karna, and nothing like that is going to happen again. If it makes you feel any better, you should know that he's already been up for hours praying for penance. So there's no need for any disciplinary action, he's beating himself up just fine."

Yudhisthira was really fighting not to fidget with his hands now. He had a question to ask. It was an important question. He wanted to know if Karna had been _ordered_ to go after Arjuna. But Yudhisthira couldn't bear to ask the question. So instead he said, "I made Arjuna promise to stay away from Karna. I would much appreciate it if--"

"Yeah, okay. I'll tell him to back off."

"I just don't like it," Yudhisthira said, "when they get close to each other. They bring out the worst in each other. It's like they become different people." He stopped for a moment, watching Duryodhana's reaction, but his cousin was clearly still stewing. Yudhisthira could sympathize; Duryodhana had a lot to stew about. "Please," Yudhisthira finally said, "Please, I… A lot of things were said and done yesterday, and I'm not proud of any of it. But I don't want things to…" He trailed off, staring at his tea. Decades of diplomatic training were threatening to be instantly washed away by an onslaught of treacherous, humiliating tears. Bhisma would kick him if he could Yudhisthira now. "I don't want things to…" He tried again, then had to stop.

And then, slowly, Duryodhana stood up. He walked over toward Yudhisthira, and put his cold hand on Yudhisthira's shoulder. Yudhisthira felt himself relax, felt the knot in his chest beginning to loosen. This was the part where Duryodhana would hug him and tell him that he was being a worrywart and say that they were family and that everything was going to be all right, just like he always did, just like he had a thousand times before.

But then Duryodhana said, "That's natural. Animosity between your court and my court, it's to be expected."

Yudhisthira glanced up at Duryodhana, searching his face, wondering if he had heard correctly.

"Because Kuru is divided, even though it shouldn't be," Duryodhana went on. His eyes were hard and cold. Yudhisthira resisted the urge to shiver, being held in the gaze of those eyes. Yudhisthira had seen that expression on Duryodhana's face before, but never directed at himself. "It's an unnatural state of affairs. It's _sinful_. No wonder everything's spinning out of control." Duryodhana took his hand away from Yudhisthira's shoulder. "This can't go on. You want to fix things? Do you want to go back to the way we were before – one big happy family? There's only one way to accomplish that, Yudhisthira, and you know what it is."

Yudhisthira stared at him. "You want to re-unite the kingdom," he said.

Duryodhana nodded, silently.

"And how? Who will--?"

"One throne," Duryodhana said, "one king, and one court. That's the way that it has to be."

Yudhisthira slowly set down his teacup, then stood out of his chair. He stood facing Duryodhana, still unable to tear his eyes away from Duryodhana's icy glare. "Is that what you want, is it?" he asked. There was no point in asking who Duryodhana imagined would be sitting on the future one throne of Kuru, because Yudhisthira could read the answer in his eyes.

"Yes," Duryodhana said. "And you should want that too."

Yudhisthira shook his head, slowly.

"But it's for the good of the kingdom--!"

"_No_," Yudhisthira suddenly said. He surprised himself with the vehemence of it. From the look on Duryodhana's face, he was clearly surprised, too. "No," Yudhisthira repeated, and then stopped, because he couldn't find the words to explain why. But it didn't matter, _he _knew why. It was because, deep down in his heart and in the back of his mind, he had always known that Bhisma had chosen him over Duryodhana to take Kuru's throne, even if nobody had ever told him as much. It was because, in the short time that he had ruled over Indraprastha, Yudhisthira had learned more about what it meant to truly be a king than he had ever learned in Hastinapura, and he had become ten times the king that he had once dared to hope that he could become. It was because Yudhisthira loved Duryodhana so deeply and profoundly that he wanted to fix things for real, he wanted to make things_ right_, and he knew that merely handing Indraprastha over to Duryodhana wouldn't truly fix any of the ugliness currently dividing them, it would only make it worse.

And it was because Yudhisthira was terrified of that calculating, empty coldness in Duryodhana's eyes.

"Is that it?" Duryodhana asked, his eyebrow twitching. "Just 'no'? You're going to ignore the suffering of our people just because you don't want to give up your own damned shiny headgear?"

"That's not true," Yudhisthira said, carefully. "I do want the kingdom to be reunited. But…" Yudhisthira paused, tapping at his chin, wondering how much he would be able to explain, wondering if Duryodhana was willing to listen to any of it. _I love you_ and _I'm afraid for you _and _I want to do this right and it will be never be done right so long as you have that look in your eyes_ all seemed, in his head, to sound too trite to say.

"Listen," said Duryodhana. "I just want you to know where I stand. I mean, I figured, you and I, we have to talk about this someday, right? So…. So, Yudhisthira. Where do _you_ stand?"

Yudhisthira looked Duryodhana squarely in the eye and said, "I don't know."

Duryodhana smacked his forehead and groaned melodramatically. "Let me guess. You're determined to make this a thousand times more complicated and nuanced than it has to be, right?"

"Yes!" Yudhisthira answered, brightly. "And you're right, we do have to talk about this. Someday. But not now, please, not today." Yudhisthira finally smiled and said, "We're on vacation." He reached out for Duryodhana's icy-cold hands, forcing himself to beam cheerfully. "Will you come to my wedding, please? You and your brothers and your entire court. Please, Duryodhana. I would love to have you there."

Duryodhana hesitated for a moment. Then, slowly, he took Yudhisthira's hands in his. "Thank you," he said, finally. "I'll be there." Then he squeezed Yudhisthira's hands, and for a brief moment, his touch felt warm. "Congratulations. I mean it, really. You deserve this."

"Thank you," Yudhisthira said. "Really, thank you."

They embraced – it happened spontaneously, each reaching for the other at the same time – and Yudhisthira wrapped his arms around Duryodhana's broad shoulders and sighed contentedly. "I should go," he said, after a long moment, pulling out of Duryodhana's embrace. "There's a fitting that I'm already late for."

"Go, go!" Duryodhana said, laughing, ushering Yudhisthira quickly out of the room. "You can't be late for something like that. Drupada will have your head."

Duryodhana escorted Yudhisthira outside his guest quarters, where Drupada's army of aides was waiting for him. Yudhisthira squeezed Duryodhana's hand one last time, briefly, before his cousin left again.

As Yudhisthira followed Drupada's servants to another wing of the palace, he mulled over his visit to Duryodhana, over and over again in his head. Well, Duryodhana had certainly pointed out the elephant in the room, the elephant that had been there ever since Dhritarashtra had announced the division of Kuru. Yudhisthira knew that someday he and Duryodhana would have to reunite their kingdom. And now he knew that Duryodhana planned to be sitting on the sole Kuru throne when all was said and done. But as for Yudhisthira himself…? What he had told Duryodhana was true. He didn't know where he stood, what he wanted, or whether he believed that it should ultimately be him or Duryodhana left wearing the crown in the end. But what he _did _know was right now, at this moment, he absolutely could not hand over his kingdom to Duryodhana. Because there was something frightening in Duryodhana's eyes.

Well, Yudhisthira thought, forcibly reminding himself to walk with his back straight and his chin held high the way that a king _should _walk, he had done all right for himself, he supposed. He had started out his meeting with Duryodhana nearly ready to break down in tears, and had finished by standing up for himself. Maybe, if he could see Yudhisthira right now, Bhisma would be proud.

Or maybe he would still want to kick him.

Yudhisthira suspected the latter.

* * *

XI.

The first wedding happened with a surprising amount of fanfare. The moment that Yudhisthira saw the elaborate flower arrangements and the hundreds of dancers, he finally realized just how long sneaky old Drupada had been planning for this day in the first place. Riding into the ceremony on the back of an enormous beast whose name Yudhisthira couldn't pronounce and which he could neither identify as either reptile or mammal, that was the tricky part. Avoiding eye contact with Arjuna throughout the entire day? That was easy.

Yudhisthira went through the motions and smiled and held himself as a king should the entire day. But he felt strangely detached, absent. It wasn't until very late that night, surrounded by dim candlelight and the comforting promise of silence and privacy, as Draupadi disrobed herself and climbed into his bed, that Yudhisthira finally realized that he was married.

"Oh good Lord," he said.

Draupadi paused, her face inches away from his. "What?"

"I just married you."

"Hmm. That you did." Her hair was falling in a cascade all around him, blocking the candlelight, enveloping him in darkness and the scent of alien flowers. "And?"

"…I think I'm glad that I did."

She laughed. "Are you trying to say that you love me?"

Yudhisthira wanted to say _yes_, but instead his brain grasped for some appropriately witty bedroom banter instead. His brain flailed futilely for a moment, then he gave up, and pressed his lips to hers instead.

They made love slowly, and then Yudhisthira drifted off to sleep, listening to her breathing.

There was no time for them to linger in bed together the next morning, however. When Yudhisthira woke up, Draupadi was already sitting half-out of the bed, absent-mindedly running her fingers through her snarled hair while talking on a comm unit. "You can't move the fitting up fifteen minutes?" she sighed, and then listened as someone on the other end of the comm unit spoke. Then she frowned, and turned toward Yudhisthira. She was still naked, her skin shiny and warm with sleep, and she didn't seem to notice or care. "I'll ask him," she told the comm, then cupped one hand over the mouthpiece and asked Yudhisthira, "Reception tonight. Where do you think you should sit?"

Yudhisthira blinked at her sleepily. "What?"

"I'm asking you because I don't have the faintest idea," Draupadi sighed. "As my husband, you should be next to me at the head of the table. But I'm marrying your brother, so it should Bhima beside me tonight. Which leaves the two seats on either side of us, but my father has to take one and your mother has to take the other. And Dhristadyumna is supposed to sit closer to me than the rest of _your _brothers, but if we make room for you and Duryodhana two seats away from the head, then either Duryodhana will be sitting closer to me, and that's not right because you're my husband, or you'll be sitting closer to me, and Duryodhana will have to be between you and Arjuna, and that's not right because Arjuna and the other two are still my fiancés. So…" She trailed off, and scowled at nothing in particular. "You'd think that somewhere there would be an etiquette manual to cover this sort of thing."

"What, polyandry?"

"You make it sound so dirty." She clicked off the comm unit without bothering to warn whoever was on the other end, and then tossed it casually aside. "Well, we have until this afternoon to decide, either way." Then she let her gaze linger on Yudhisthira, who was lying beside her now completely uncovered. "You look nice, in the sunlight," she said.

"And you look beautiful." He sat up, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her neck. It was so deliciously warm in that room, he didn't mind being naked at all. Draupadi's skin felt pleasantly hot. Her weight shifted comfortably against Yudhisthira, and she relaxed in his arms and laughed as he tickled her with his lips.

"Mmm." Draupadi gently disentangled herself from his arms. "Forgive me love, but I really do have to get out of bed. I have a wedding to prepare for." She slid out of the bed, scratched herself, then started scanning the floor, apparently searching for the comm unit that she had just tossed away.

That was when Yudhisthira saw the dried blood on the sheets. "Did I hurt you?" he asked.

"Hmm? What?"

"You were bleeding."

"…I know." She looked down at the sheets, then up at him. "I was told that that might happen."

Yudhisthira blinked at her. "I wasn't."

Draupadi tossed her hair over her shoulder and smiled at him. "If I had wanted you to stop, I would have told you to stop. You trust me that far, don't you?"

Yudhisthira gazed at her, standing casually naked in front of him, her long tangled hair spilling down her back, devakin markings wrapping around her shoulders and neck, small breasts casting slight but sensual shadows on her torso, her body lean and muscular and looking perfectly delicious. "I do trust you," Yudhisthira finally said. "Or else I wouldn't be letting you marry my brothers."

"Good to know," Draupadi said, with a laugh.

* * *

XII.

The second wedding was even more elaborate than the first. Most of this was because, by the second day, enough time had passed for gifts and supplies to start arriving from Kuru. Drupada's chefs had little idea what to do with the three tons of flash-frozen seafood that arrived on a transport from Kuru the morning of Bhima's wedding, but Yudhisthira sent his own chef into the palace kitchen armed with recipes and a letter of signed authority, and somehow the wedding feast was pulled together in the end.

Duryodhana wandered through the reception afterwards, ignoring everyone who tried to approach him, feeling in a foul mood. Tomorrow would be Arjuna's wedding, and Ashwatthama had asked to be included in the ceremony along with Drupada's priest. That made Duryodhana angry, although there was no way he could have forbidden Ashwatthama from participating without horrifically insulting Yudhisthira's family. Duryodhana pulled out his comm unit, and considered summoning Ashwatthama. Just to give him a piece of his mind, just to make sure that Ashwatthama knew where his place really was.

But before he could dial, Duryodhana caught a glimpse of his wayward priest near a refreshment table, talking with Arjuna. The bruises on Arjuna's face and neck, leftover from his fight with Karna, were still clearly visible even beneath his makeup. Duryodhana watched them both talking and laughing, then shook his head and turned away before he started to see red. He took little satisfaction in knowing that Arjuna would be black and blue for his wedding day. Duryodhana still suspected that Ashwatthama had been involved in the plot to sneak Arjuna into Draupadi's groom-choosing. Even if he would never be able to prove it, Duryodhana knew somehow that it was true.

"Your Majesty…"

Duryodhana turned his head. A lovely young woman was standing in front of him, backed by several demurely bowing attendants. Duryodhana couldn't place her face, but he did know her, and vaguely remembered her being a twice-removed niece of Shalya, or somesuch. The shape of her eyes looked distinctly Madraka. "Would you give me the honor of a dance, Your Majesty?"

Duryodhana debated this internally. He didn't want to dance. He didn't even want to _touch_ her. But the cost of offending one of Shalya's relatives would be greater in the long run. "It would be my pleasure," Duryodhana said, trying his best to turn on his charm. He reached out, took her arm, and escorted her toward the dance floor.

Unfortunately, among the few dancers taking to the floor were none other than the bride and groom. They were comically mismatched in size, but Bhima's graceful, quick movements perfectly matched Draupadi's dancing. Draupadi threw back her head and laughed as Bhima effortlessly lifted her off the ground and whirled her around. The watching wedding guests clapped and cheered.

Duryodhana whirled his partner, whose name he still couldn't remember, around the far end of the dance floor, trying to gaze at her face in a way that he hoped looked romantically interested. He forced himself to stare at his own partner, and not at Draupadi. If he looked at Draupadi, he would see red. When he thought of her face, all that he could think of was _whore whore whore whore whore whore._

Goddamn whore. Filthy slut. Spreading her legs every night for Yudhisthira and each of his brothers in turn like an overworked prostitute.

And all of these people seemed so intent on _celebrating _this abomination of a marriage.

"Is something wrong?" Duryodhana's dance partner suddenly asked.

"No, I…"

"Your face…"

Duryodhana lifted his hand from her hip in order to touch his own face. His skin felt hot and flushed. "Let me guess. I'm as red as wine, aren't I?" He pulled her closer to him. "You're making me blush."

"Shall I take that as a compliment, Your Majesty?"

"Please do." Then he let her go, stepping away from her. "I'm sorry, really, I am, but I think I need a break. A drink or something." He hurried away from her before she could protest.

Duryodhana found Karna standing beneath a window, almost instinctively standing directly in the center of the patch of sunlight that was falling on his shoulders. Shrutakiirti must have been off socializing somewhere, Duryodhana figured. Well, perfect. He needed to talk to Karna alone.

"Have something to drink," Duryodhana said, gesturing to bid an attendant to bring wine and glasses.

"Thank you," Karna said, "But I don't drink."

"I bet," Duryodhana said, taking a glass offered by another servant, "that you would be way more fun as a drunk than you are sober."

Karna raised one eyebrow at this.

"Look at you," Duryodhana said, reaching over to touch Karna's forehead. "Not even a scar left from yesterday." He took a sip of his wine. "Arjuna looks like a wreck. But you're fine." Duryodhana peered at Karna, his eyes narrowed. "How can that be?"

Karna shifted his feet uncomfortably. "I don't know." He shook his head. "I honestly don't know." He touched his own head, as if slightly amazed that his skull and brains were still intact. "To be perfectly honest, it's a bit disconcerting."

"Nah," Duryodhana said, quickly. "It just means that the gods are protecting you. All of that praying that you do has to pay off somehow, right?" He laughed, although Karna did not join in his laughter. "Listen, do you think that if I start praying to the sun, I could get an unbreakable body, too?" He knocked his own head jokingly, then winced. "Ow."

This, at least, finally got Karna to smile. "I wouldn't know about that." He turned his head slightly, gazing out the window. His earrings gleamed in the reflected light of the setting sun. "The sun is different here," he said. "It's closer, and hotter, and has a different light than Kuru's sun."

"Hmmmm. You notice those things?"

"I can feel them."

"But it's still the same Lord Surya, right?"

Karna smiled contentedly, gazing out the window. "Yes, it is."

Duryodhana stepped closer to Karna, leaning comfortably against his shoulder. He felt warm, as always. "Sometimes I think that you're even more crazy-religious than Ashwatthama."

Karna chuckled. "I'll take that as a compliment." Then he turned his head slightly toward Duryodhana and said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For not winning Draupadi for you."

Duryodhana snorted derisively. "Don't apologize. I should be the one apologizing to you. I never would have asked – oh, Gods, Karna, I'm so sorry, I never would have asked you to try to win her if I'd known that she would…" He trailed off when he saw the look in Karna's eyes. Duryodhana realized that he'd made a mistake. He'd only managed to hurt Karna by reminding him of his humiliation on the arena floor. Duryodhana couldn't stand to see that pained look on Karna's face, so he quickly decided to try a different tact. "I wouldn't want to marry that kind of woman anyhow." He took an angry, emphatic swig from his wine glass. "Any woman that would share her bed with five different men is a whore not worth being trusted." He watched Karna carefully, trying to gauge Karna's reactions to his words.

To his relief, Karna nodded, somberly. "These weddings are shameful," Karna whispered, keeping his voice discretely low. "This marriage is a sin. It's an affront against the gods. It's just a glorified celebration of promiscuity, that's what it is."

"Tell me about it," Duryodhana murmured darkly. "No woman should ever take more than one husband."

"Or a husband more than one wife," Karna added.

Duryodhana abruptly pulled his shoulder away from Karna. "But--"

"I don't care if one way is a royal tradition and the other way is considered a sin," Karna said, with a dismissive shrug. "Human law may sanction it, but this custom that you royals have of turning yourselves into man-whores is equally as sinful and revolting as Draupadi becoming a whore tonight. But I suppose that there's nothing unusual about this level of sinfulness among kings, after all. It's just another symptom of the corruption and excess of the royal class."

Duryodhana stared at Karna, a bit aghast. It happened every time. Just when he thought that he was starting to understand Karna, Karna would say or do something to remind Duryodhana that he was actually deeply crazy. Duryodhana had never met anyone crazy enough to pray to the rising sun every morning regardless of the time or weather, crazy enough to throw away his wealth at any commoner who asked him for a favor, or crazy enough to criticize thousands of years of royal customs while the King of Kuru was standing at his shoulder.

"You know," Duryodhana said, "You're royalty now too. You could have another wife if you wanted." He leaned against Karna again. "Don't tell me that there's nobody you've ever thought about sleeping with. That there's _nobody _you've ever dreamt or thought about."

Karna shook his head. "I have my wife."

"You've never had anybody else? Not even anyone before her?"

"No."

"And you would never, ever lay a finger on anyone else?"

"_No._"

"How disappointing." Duryodhana sighed. "We're going to have to work on that." He winked at Karna. "You should stay away from me, I can be a corrupting influence." He laughed. "I bet I could even get Ashwatthama a girlfriend."

"You'll get Ashwatthama to break his vows before you get me to betray Shrutakiirti."

"Ooooh, sounds like a challenge." Duryodhana raised his glass in a toast. "To laviciousness!" Then he took a sip of his wine and murmured darkly, "Bhisma is right. I need a goddamn wife."

* * *

XIII.

Draupadi was surprised to find herself not tired in the least, even after the wedding festivities ended, and she and Bhima were left alone in private quarters. "So," she said, leaning against Bhima, "So, just how strong are you?"

"I could lift you up and carry you."

"Then please do."

Bhima lifted her up easily. "Like this?"

Draupadi threw back her head and laughed, delighted. "Absolutely." She threw her arms around his neck and said, "I don't know why, but this is really turning me on."

"Who needs to know why?" Bhima carried her over to the bed, and set her down gently. Her wedding dress fell in inelegant clumps all around her legs, but Draupadi didn't care. Bhima knelt down beside her, took her hand in his, and kissed it gently. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Are you offering to wait on me hand and foot?"

"Yes."

"Excellent." She leaned back against the pillows piled on top of the bed, sighing contentedly. "Bring me the best damn wine that your dowry has to offer." She glanced over at Bhima coyly. "And I want you to bring it to me naked."

Bhima laughed, a deep bellow that made the whole room shake. "I love you," he said.

Draupadi rolled over on her side, facing him. "Tell me why you love me," she said.

Bhima sat down on the bed beside her. The entire bed creaked ominously beneath Bhima's weight, but Draupadi didn't mind. "All right," Bhima said. "Remember that time that you invaded Kuru?"

"Yes?"

"And that day that your ships powered down your weapons. And afterwards I was meeting with you and Dhristadyumna . And Dhristadyumna was going on and on at me about radiation discharges and needing a place to dump your fleet's waste and all this other stuff. And Yudhisthira was being all wishy-washy about the waste issue, going on and on and on about how his hands were tied because of the environmental agencies putting caps on dump weights from foreign ships. Then you went right up into Yudhisthira's face and said, 'With all due respect, _Your Majesty, _we are neither tourists nor--'"

"Oh I did not sound like that."

"You did."

"Really? I was _that _rude to Yudhisthira?"

"You seriously don't remember?" Bhima laughed.

"Not really, no. Back then Yudhisthira was the least of my concerns. He barely registered as more than a blip on my consciousness."

"So it was Arjuna who left the real impression on you, was it?"

"At the time, yes." Draupadi twirled a lock of hair around her fingers with exaggerated casualness. "Don't hate me for saying that, though. I love you."

"I know you do."

"So. Do keep telling me this story about how you fell in love with me, darling."

"Hmm. Well. I don't remember what exactly everybody said, but I think it all ended with you outright threatening to personally take an axe to the Undersecretary of Water Table Monitoring's neck if you couldn't get dumping approval within ten hours. And I believe the line 'We have the firepower to conquer your planet ten times before teatime, Your Majesty, and don't think that we won't resort to using it' was said at some point. It was both the least diplomatic and also the hottest thing that I had ever heard any woman say in my entire life."

Draupadi peered at Bhima carefully. "So… since then?"

"Yes. I've loved you since then."

Draupadi wrapped her arms around his shoulders - or at least, attempted to wrap her arms around as much of Bhima's nearest shoulder as she could. "But you never said anything…"

"Because Arjuna loved you," Bhima said. "It was obvious even then."

Draupadi was silent for a moment. Then she said, "You really love your brothers, don't you." She rested her head against Bhima's shoulder and said, "Well, good. Because I do too."

Bhima laughed again. Then he sat up, slipped off the bed, and said, "I need to order your wine." He started fumbling about his clothes, searching for his comm unit. "Now where…?"

"A suggestion," Draupadi said. "Take off your clothes, and then we'll find your comm."

"I _really _love the way you think."

* * *

XIV.

Arjuna woke up on the morning of his wedding day feeling strangely light-headed. That persistent feeling of goofy light-headedness simply refused to leave him, even during breakfast, even during his fittings with Drupada's tailors, even during his briefing on the ceremony (no time for an actual rehearsal), even when Ashwatthama finally showed up in order to pray with Arjuna mere minutes before the wedding was to begin.

"Look at you," Ashwatthama said. "I've never seen you so happy."

Arjuna blushed. "Is it that obvious?"

"That's nothing to be ashamed of. You're getting married. You _should _be happy." Ashwatthama reached out and squeezed Arjuna's hand. "I'm happy for you."

"Thank you." Suddenly, impulsively, Arjuna pulled Ashwatthama close, then wrapped his arms around Ashwatthama in a tight hug. "You know I love you, right?" he asked, squeezing Ashwatthama tightly.

"I know." Ashwatthama, his hands around Arjuna's shoulders, squeezed Arjuna tightly in return.

Arjuna wanted to say more. He felt stupid and foolish, clinging to Ashwatthama as if they were still children. But still he kept holding onto Ashwatthama, trying to think of the right words to say what he wanted to say, suddenly desperate to express everything that he had ever felt about Ashwatthama, suddenly panicking at the thought that he would never be able to tell his friend just how much he meant to him. But in the end, all that Arjuna could say was, "Thank you for officiating this."

"Of course. Arjuna…" Ashwatthama gently disentangled himself from Arjuna's embrace. "Any time you ever need or want anything, just ask me. I'll do anything for you." Ashwatthama squeezed Arjuna's hands. "I swear."

"And," said Arjuna, pulling his hands out of Ashwatthama's grasp just so that he could clasp Ashwatthama's hands in his own, "I swear the same to you. Anything you will ever ask of me, it's yours."

"Oh, really?" Ashwatthama laughed. "Then can you convince Duryodhana to give me permission to visit you in Indraprastha at least once?"

"I'll try," Arjuna said. "Although there may be some tasks beyond even my awesome powers to accomplish."

"Thank you for trying, though." Ashwatthama took Arjuna's arm, and they walked together towards the wedding hall. "A suggestion, though: His Majesty is usually a bit more agreeable when inebriated."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Most other coherent thoughts left Arjuna's mind, however, the moment that he saw Draupadi in her wedding clothes, waiting for him. He managed to stumble through the ceremony without fumbling anything, mostly by never taking his eyes off of her. Afterwards was the reception, and the wine, and the dancing, and even more wine.

By the time that the sun had set and Arjuna was finally left alone with Draupadi, he was more than a little bit drunk. But that was all right. The wine had washed away most of his nervousness about what was to come next.

He was holding her close to him, the two of them draped over a couch and over each other, kissing each other slowly, when Draupadi suddenly pulled away from Arjuna, climbed off the couch, and stood up. "Shall we?" she asked, holding out her hand invitingly.

Arjuna understood that this was an invitation to bed. No more procrastinating on the couch. "I've never done this before," Arjuna said. "It feels weird."

"What?"

"Doing something that I haven't done before."

"Are you saying that you would have preferred some practice beforehand?"

"Er…"

"Oh, my mother told me all about you professional archers," Draupadi said. "Strong upper body. Tight, rippling muscles. Excellent reflexes. And extremely talented fingers. Well?" Draupadi asked, slowly beginning to unwrap her top.

"Wait," Arjuna suddenly said. Draupadi paused, and he stood up, walked toward her, and placed his hands on her shoulders. "I, um…." He was really blushing furiously now. "I want to do it," he said in a small voice, tangling his fingers in her silk wrap and slowly pulling it down.

In response to this, Draupadi merely leaned forward and kissed him hard, on his lips. Arjuna wrapped his arms around her, then began groping her back for the fastener holding her brassiere in place. And Draupadi kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, then pulled away from his mouth just long enough to lick his ear and whisper something in Panchalan that was definitely _not _in any of Arjuna's dictionaries or phrasebooks. Then Arjuna kissed her neck, over and over again, and she giggled, and the vibration of her throaty giggles tickled Arjuna's lips and he could feel the heat of her flushed skin baking against his and then finally, finally, he found that damn fastener pressed against the small of her back.

Arjuna hesitated for a moment, his lips pressed against Draupadi's neck, his fingers poised around the fastener at her back.

Draupadi wrapped her arms around him. "Take me," she whispered, breathily.

And then Arjuna finally undid the fastener.

* * *

XV.

The communal breakfast was Yudhisthira's idea. The five brothers and Draupadi were left alone in a private dining room with the finest that Drupada had to offer spread out in front of them. But it was not a time for family bonding. Yudhisthira was there for business.

"Absolutely anything that you desire," he told Draupadi earnestly, "anything at all. Just say it. We'll give you an entire wing of the palace if you'd like."

"I don't need an entire wing of your palace," Draupadi said, poking at her breakfast without touching it. Her fourth wedding was going to be today, and the nerves were finallygetting to her. "Just my own sanctum. A study would be nice. You do have books on that backwater planet of yours, don't you?"

"We have--" Yudhisthira suddenly stopped when he comm unit buzzed. He fumbled for it, flipped it open, shook his head sheepishly as a way to apologize for his rudeness, then took a look at the screen displaying the identity of his caller, and sighed. "Grandpa Bhisma," he mouthed for the benefit of everyone at the table. Then he stood up and hurried out of the room, apparently not inclined to answer the call in front of his brothers.

"A guessing game," Nakula instantly proposed. "Why would Bhisma be calling Yudhisthira while it is only three in the morning in Hastinapura?"

"Does it matter?" Bhima asked, not even bothering to be subtle about the way that he was filching fruit from Nakula's plate. "Grandpa Bhisma never sleeps. True fact."

"He's probably just worried about us," Sahadeva said.

"Why would he be worried?" Arjuna asked, carefully cutting the calorie-laden yolk out of his fried egg.

Nobody answered. The breakfast table suddenly descended into an uncomfortable silence. Finally Bhima stood up and said, "We should get going." He grabbed a surprised Arjuna by the arm, hauling him up out of his seat. "We have to get ready for the wedding--"

"But we don't--" Arjuna started to protest, then saw the look on Bhima's face. "Oh, yeah. Those things that we have to do. We better, uh, we better go do them."

Arjuna and Bhima left. Sahadeva, not even bothering to offer an excuse, merely stood up and followed them out of the room. Which left Nakula sitting alone at the table with his soon-to-be-wife.

"Well, that was subtle of them," Nakula said.

Draupadi laughed.

But Nakula did not share her laughter. Instead he turned his head and looked at her, his not-quite-human golden eyes gazing at her intensely. "Do you know why Grandpa Bhisma is worried?" Nakula asked. "It's because Yudhisthira and I have never exactly had to share anything before."

Draupadi tilted her head at him. "That's not true. You share a kingdom."

"No we don't. It's Yudhisthira's kingdom. Sahadeva and I are just window-dressing. Not that I mind that, though."

Draupadi watched him quietly for a moment. Then she asked, "Do you not want to marry me?"

"You cut right to the point, don't you?" Nakula shrugged. "Honestly? I don't know. I don't _not_ want to marry you. But I don't know if I _do_ want to marry you. Or anybody, not right now. I didn't exactly come to Panchala expecting to leave bound in a committed relationship to my first wife. And I really never expected that my first wife would also be sleeping with my brothers. I mean, that's practically like getting Yudhisthira-germs by association."

"Well," said Draupadi. "You cut right to the point, don't you?"

Nakula suddenly laughed. "So I suppose that's one thing that we have in common."

"It's a start."

"Yeah? So as long as we're being blunt, how about you?"

"You mean, what do I think of you?"

"Give it to me straight."

"On a purely physical level, I think that you and your brother Sahadeva have got to be among the top ten most beautiful human beings in existence, and were I a more shallow woman, I would be able to think to myself, sure, I wouldn't mind having _him _as a bedroom option for the rest of my life. But as for the things that really matter? I'm like you. I don't know. I don't even know you. Well, not really. I know of your reputation, though."

"Ah," Nakula said with a smirk, "my reputation precedes me."

"I know that you are not inexperienced with women."

"Yudhisthira is still convinced that I'm an untouched virgin," Nakula said. "But why am I telling you this? You've slept with him once. You probably already know more about Yudhisthira's sexual neurosis and bedroom hang-ups than I ever will."

Draupadi pushed back her chair and stood up. "So, the important question is: _Can _you share something – I mean, someone – with your brothers?"

Nakula looked up at her for a long time. "Only if it's a woman like you," he finally answered.

* * *

XVI.

On the fifth morning, Draupadi was finally starting to feel exhausted. This was largely due to the fact that she had only managed to sleep for a measly thirty minutes during the entirety of her night with Nakula. This was, in turn, largely due to the fact that Nakula had a pierced tongue and more than ample skill using it.

The fifth and final day of weddings, however, also turned out to be the most hectic. Draupadi had to make her final decisions dividing up her staff, choosing who would accompany her to Indraprastha, and who would stay behind. She oversaw the packing of her quarters while her hairdressers worked on her hair. She gave a stream of endless orders over her comm while standing in the midst of a pack of tailors fitting her final wedding gown. She threw herself into the wedding, and into the reception, smiling the whole time, forcing herself to look radiant, focusing her attention on her newest and last husband, avoiding Dhristadyumna's eyes throughout the entire day.

In the evening, finally, she was left alone with Sahadeva. They lied down in their marriage bed together, and she rolled over and kissed him, but he suddenly pulled away from her, sat up, and said, "Would you like a drink?"

She sat up beside him, blinking, confused. "What?"

"You look like you could use a drink."

Draupadi looked around for a mirror, suddenly wondering how she did look. "Is it that obvious?"

"Well, _I'd _like a drink," Sahadeva said. He peered at her with his strange golden eyes. At first Draupadi had found Sahadeva's oddly inhuman eyes disturbing. But now she was used to them. Well, Nakula had the same eyes, and that helped. Sahadeva finally slipped off the bed, stood up, and poured a glass of wine from the bottle that some thoughtful servant had already left within easy reach. "Here you are," he said, handing her the glass.

Draupadi held the glass of wine and waited, wondering if Sahadeva were about to use the wine bottle as a prop in some wildly erotic stunt. That was what Nakula would have done. But instead, Sahadeva poured himself a glass, downed it in one gulp, then climbed back onto the bed. He looked at Draupadi and said, "You're not drinking." He blinked at her. "Would you prefer something else?"

"No, I…"

Suddenly he was sitting beside her, his arms around her shoulders. "Can I hold you?" he asked.

"Eh?"

"Can I hold you? You look like you could use a holding."

Draupadi closed her eyes and relaxed into his arms, resting her head against his shoulder. "Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Because you looked sad."

"…I'm not sad. I'm happy to be here with you. Truly, I am."

Sahadeva stroked her hair, gently, and said nothing.

Finally Draupadi whispered, "But I still can't believe that this is my last night in Kampilya."

Sahadeva squeezed her tightly. "I would be sad, too," he said. "If I had to leave my home. And my brothers."

Draupadi lifted up her head and gazed at him intently. "And my _twin_ brother," she said.

Sahadeva nodded, solemnly.

"He's completely helpless without me," Draupadi sighed. "I know that he's not happy about me leaving. And that makes me feel terrible. Because I'm really – well, right now, with you and your brothers – I've never been happier. I mean it. It sounds stupid, I guess, but that's really how I feel. This, this whole marriage thing, it's so…"

"Amazing," Sahadeva said quietly, leaning forward to gently kiss her neck.

"Amazing," Draupadi giggled, because his lips tickled. "From the beginning – ever since I was a little girl – I knew that I was going to leave here someday. That's what women do. We don't stay in our homes. We're the ones who marry and leave. And I've always been prepared for that. But Dhristadyumna isn't…" She suddenly trailed off, then wrapped her arms around Sahadeva's shoulders and moaned. "Your tongue…"

"Hmm?" Sahadeva paused in the midst of licking one of her earlobes.

"It's not pierced."

"Nakula is the one with the pierced tongue. I have a pierced…" Sahadeva paused. Then, blushing, he pulled away from Draupadi's embrace, and began to pull off his shirt.

"Your navel?" Draupadi observed, amused.

"No. That's just the one that I showed Yudhisthira when he asked." Sahadeva undid his belt, and then pulled down a bit of his pants. "Down here," he said, pointing.

"My goodness," Draupadi said.

"I can take it out, if you want me to," Sahadeva said quickly.

"Hmmm… Let me try it and see if I like it first. How about that?"

Sahadeva blinked at her. "Weren't we just having a serious conversation about your relationship with Dhristadyumna?"

"Darling, you're sitting in front of me half-naked and exposing your bits. Can we save the depressing talk for tomorrow morning?"

Sahadeva frowned, seriously considering this. "All right," he finally said.

* * *

XVII.

The next morning was Draupadi's last morning on Panchala. She awoke knowing this, and tried not to think about it, but couldn't help but think about it. She rolled over in bed and found that Sahadeva wasn't there. Then she sat up, stretched, and saw Sahadeva standing on the other side of the bedroom, uncorking a fresh bottle of wine.

Draupadi glanced at the clock beside the bed. "It's seven hundred hours in the morning," she said, as Sahadeva sat down on the bed beside her and offered her a glass of wine. "Isn't it a bit early to be drinking?"

"It's never too early." Sahadeva raised his wine glass and tapped it against Draupadi's. "A toast," he said.

"To what?"

"To Indraprastha," Sahadeva said. "Because it belongs to you now."

Draupadi laughed. "My eyes are up here, you know."

"Oh… sorry." Sahadeva had thrown on a robe, but Draupadi was still nude, unabashedly exposed, without even bothering to cover herself with a sheet. Sahadeva sipped his wine and said, "You look even more beautiful in the sunlight."

"As do you, darling." The room was pleasantly warm, and Draupadi felt alert, well-rested, and a bit playful. She should have been worrying about the last-minute arrangements for the impending departure to Kuru, or should have been finishing up the last of her packing, or should have at least been worrying about Dhristadyumna. But for the moment, Draupadi didn't want to think about any of that. She rather wanted Sahadeva to remove his robe instead.

Draupadi leaned back against a pile of pillows, sipping her wine. "You know, a girl could get used to this," she said. "Five men totally devoted to me, waiting on me hand and foot… And every morning I wake up to one of them telling me how beautiful I am." She sighed. "Best enjoy it now, I guess. Someday I'll be old and gray and wrinkled and sagging, and then you'll--"

"No, you won't be," Sahadeva suddenly said.

"Hmm?"

"You won't ever be old or gray. You won't live that long."

Draupadi blinked, confused. "I beg your pardon?"

Sahadeva was sitting on the edge of the bed, his body turned slightly away from her, staring down at the glass of wine in his hand, his face curiously slack, expressionless. "You won't live that long. None of us will, except for Yudhisthira. One by one, we all fall off the side of the mountain, until he's the only one left, still climbing through the snow, old and gray and alone."

Draupadi stared at Sahadeva, saying nothing. Then, after a long minute, she realized that Sahadeva wasn't moving, wasn't blinking. He didn't even appear to be breathing, not by much. Suddenly alarmed, Draupadi sat up quickly, nearly spilling her wine, and leaned over toward him. "Sahadeva…?"

No response.

She reached out and shook his shoulder. "Sahadeva--!"

He turned his head toward her. "What? What's wrong?" he asked, suddenly alarmed.

Draupadi's mouth opened and closed, and she hesitated, unsure of what to say.

Sahadeva winced and rubbed his shoulder. "Is this your idea of foreplay?" he asked.

"No, I… You were…. You said something about me dying--"

"What?" Sahadeva blinked at her, clearly baffled. "What are you talking about?"

Draupadi stared at him until it slowly dawned on her that whatever he had been saying or thinking moments before, he clearly didn't remember it now. "Never mind," she said, shaking her head. She figured that she probably should be more concerned about what had just happened, but strangely, she wasn't. Maybe it was because both she and Sahadeva were devakin, and Draupadi knew that sometimes devakin just had strange experiences. Draupadi suspected that this was particularly true for Nakula and Sahadeva, who were probably the two _least _human devakin that she had ever met.

Draupadi leaned over and kissed Sahadeva quickly. "I should get dressed," she told him.

"Likewise, I suppose." Sahadeva sounded disappointed.

Draupadi lifted her wine glass one last time. "To Indraprastha," she said. She gulped down the last of her wine and then said with a contented sigh, "It's good to be the queen."

* * *

XVIII.

The goodbyes were the most difficult.

"Take care of Father," Draupadi said, kissing Dhristadyumna's cheek, "and be strong," she added, kissing his other cheek.

"I…" Dhristadyumna trailed off, unable to finish without embarrassing himself. Finally, he stepped away from Draupadi, and turned his face away from her. "Just go," he said. Then he mumbled, "I'll call you."

"Every day?"

"Er… There's a time difference…"

"It was a joke," Draupadi said. Then she looked at him and said, "You really are helpless without me."

Dhristadyumna stiffened. "I'll be fine."

"I hope for your sake that you will be." Then Draupadi turned away from Dhristadyumna and walked slowly across the floor of the hangar bay, followed by her attendants and her luggage, while the watching cameras flashed and the reporters crowded around them shouted questions. Draupadi ignored all of them. She walked until she reached Yudhisthira, who was patiently waiting for her. She took his arm, paused, and then turned to wave to the crowd. The crowd burst into cheers, even as Draupadi turned her back to them, and she and Yudhisthira climbed up the boarding ramp leading to the stateship that was about to take them away to Kuru.

Dhristadyumna stood and watched until the order was given to clear the hangar floor. Then he left, numb and quiet. He was escorted to a waiting hoverer. He climbed inside, and found himself alone. He sat down and realized that he would no longer have to wait for Sikhandhi or Draupadi to join him. Dhristadyumna opened his mouth, ready to instruct his driver to leave, when suddenly someone _did _climb into the hoverer and sit down beside him.

It was his father.

"You look like you could use this," Dhristadyumna's father said, handing him a smokeroll. It was one of the luxurious Kuru smokerolls that Duryodhana had given the Panchalan royal family as presents.

Dhristadyumna started when he saw his father pull out a second smokeroll and a lighter capsule. "Father…?"

"I'm old, I think I've earned my right to smoke inside a hoverer," Dhristadyumna's father said. Then he handed the lighter capsule to Dhristadyumna. "And as for you, you're practically a king. Soon you'll have more responsibilities than rights. But one of the few rights that you _will_ have will be the right to light up whenever and wherever you wish. Enjoy it while you can."

Dhristadyumna accepted the lighter capsule and clicked it on. A small flame sprung up from its tip. He held it up to the end of his smokeroll, but at that instant, the hoverer suddenly lurched against a pocket of turbulence. Dhristadyumna hissed as the lighter capsule's flame brushed against his fingers holding the smokeroll.

And that was it. A simple, stupid thing. But for Dhristadyumna, the pain of even a little bit of exposure to flame was more than he could bear, because it was the clearest reminder of everything that he had lost over the years. His hands, still holding the smokeroll and lighter capsule, began to shake.

Drupada reached over and quickly snatched the lighter capsule away from Dhristadyumna. Then he looked at his son for a long moment and said, "I'm sorry."

"Yes. I know." Dhristadyumna had heard his father say that before. And he knew that it was deeply true. But he couldn't stop feeling bitter about everything.

When Dhristadyumna had been a child, everything had been so clear and simple. He'd had a father that he loved, a teacher who would raise him to be a great warrior, and a bitter enemy – Kuru – to conquer. Then the teacher, Drona, had left. And Dhristadyumna's father, once the most perfect and brave and stalwart and invincible man that Dhristadyumna had ever known, had literally shriveled with grief, collapsing under the weight of his own despair, right in front of Dhristadyumna's eyes. But then, the grief had turned into hatred, and the despair into a thirst for revenge. And Dhristadyumna, still merely a child back then, still eager to prove himself, and desperate to do anything that he could to see his father stand proud and tall again… He had let himself be infected by that hatred. He had embraced it. And he had done the one and only thing he could think to do, in order to bring his father happiness.

He had given up his Gift, in exchange for the Lord's promise that he would be the one to kill Drona.

That was why fire could burn Dhristadyumna. Once upon a time, his Gift had been an absolute protection against all flame, no matter what the source or intensity. He could have – and had, much to his mother's horror on one memorable occasion – walked right through a fire without even an inch of his skin being burnt. Dhristadyumna's twin Draupadi still had that Gift. She would never give hers up, for any price. But Dhristadyumna had exchanged his Gift for his boon from the gods. And at the time, Dhristadyumna remembered that his father had been so happy, and so proud of him.

Then things had changed. Sikhandhi had gotten weird. A cold war had settled between Kuru and Panchala, either side loathe to provoke the other. Drona had finally surfaced again on Kuru, but Dhristadyumna's father had _let him _cower behind the protection of a spoiled Kuru prince. Years had passed, and Dhristadyumna's world had kept growing darker and stranger. Dhristadyumna had absorbed himself in his studies in order to become Panchala's future king, trying to ignore the fact that he was watching his father growing older and grayer, trying to ignore the way that Sikhandhi continued on her mad quest to flaunt the laws of nature and the Gods, trying not to resent the fact that his beautiful, free-wheeling, elegant and confident sister Draupadi became the darling of the Kampilya press while the rest of her family was frequently and viciously vilified.

Then, overnight, everything had changed – again. Arjuna had kidnapped Dhristadyumna's father and started a war. _Finally _a move could be made against Kuru. _Finally _Dhristadyumna would be able to face Drona for the last time. _Finally_ he could fulfill the destiny that he had traded his Gift for, and finally he could satisfy the driving purpose in his life.

Except that things hadn't worked out that way. Dhristadyumna's father had forgiven Drona. Which had left Dhristadyumna with no Gift, a death vow that nobody wanted him to carry out, and no way left to bring his father happiness.

And then peace had been declared with Kuru. And then both Sikhandhi and Draupadi had married and gone away. Which now left Dhristadyumna with no brother, no sister, and no more enemy to unite his kingdom against, either.

It left him with a whole lot of nothing, actually.

"You're burnt," Dhristadyumna's father said, examining his hand.

Dhristadyumna shook him off. "It's nothing," he said. Then he added quickly, "And this did _not _happen because I'm useless without _her_ or anything."

"…I never said that you were."

Dhristadyumna held his burnt hand and said nothing.

Finally, his father sighed. "You will make a great king someday, Dhristadyumna," he said. "Even despite the fact that I am your father."

* * *

XIV.

Jumpspace was quiet and strange. Draupadi watched the otherworldly colors sliding past the observation deck windows, and listened patiently to Yudhisthira.

"The schedule isn't set in stone, of course," Yudhisthira said, flipping open an electronic reader that one of his aides had handed him, and calling up the appropriate screen. "We'll have one night in Hastinapura for the send-off celebration. They've already prepared a ship to take us to Indraprastha. We'll--"

"A stratosphere-jumping transport?"

"No, a… A ship. Er, the type that floats on the water."

Draupadi turned toward him and raised one eyebrow. "How quaint."

"But I thought you liked the ocean."

"I do." Draupadi turned back toward the observation deck windows. "But I'm impatient to see this wonderful Indraprastha of yours. Especially if even half the things that I've heard about your heaven-built city turn out to be true."

"Ah, that's… Aha." Yudhisthira cleared his throat, a bit uncomfortably, then turned his attention back to his reader. "The villagers insist on having a feast in your honor. It may be a bit rustic, but… Hmm. It will be our first opportunity for you to meet Kritavarma, so this will be important."

"Who's Kritavarma?"

"A village elder. He's more in charge of Indraprastha than you or I am."

"I shall do my best to impress him, then."

Yudhisthira was quiet for a moment, then clicked his reader closed, and dismissed his aides with a quick gesture of his hand. The aides scurried away, and Yudhisthira and Draupadi were left alone on the observation deck. "Do you understand what you're getting into?" Yudhisthira asked, quietly.

Draupadi regarded him evenly for a moment, then answered, "You tell me what you think I'm getting into."

Yudhisthira nodded. "All right. Our planet is divided. But it shouldn't be. I think that the two kingdoms should be united. Duryodhana agrees with me. But I fear that Duryodhana would not be averse to using force to accomplish this." Yudhisthira paused, then said, "You saw what happened at the groom-choosing ceremony. Duryodhana can turn his court against us with a word. There are few people in this world who are truly capable of harming either me or my brothers, but Duryodhana has them all in his camp."

"However," said Draupadi, "now you have _me _in your camp."

"And," Yudhisthira continued, not to be deterred, "There's a prophecy that I'm supposed to destroy the world and everyone that I love."

She sidled up to him, wrapping her arms around his. "You Kurus are so docile, so peaceful. One little courtly intrigue – one little riot, one little attempted murder, one little prophecy of impending doom – and you all think it's the end of the world." She chuckled. "On Panchala, that's just a typical working day."

Yudhisthira was quiet for a long moment, then he said, "You know, Nakula was right."

"Hmmm?"

"What Nakula said before. 'Panchalans are scary.' "

Draupadi laughed, then leaned her head against Yudhisthira's shoulder. "I'm going to tell Nakula that you said that he was right about something," she said. "Then you'll never hear the end of it."

* * *

To be continued.


	21. Interlude: Shakuni II

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: SHAKUNI II

* * *

It was the media console, Shakuni decided, that really did it. Every image on every channel, and it was all the same. Draupadi, smiling and waving, the Panchalan whore-queen that the entire planet had fallen in love with, ruling Indraprastha from her throne within her otherworldly, heaven-built palace. "You should just turn that cursed thing off," Shakuni finally told Duryodhana, taking the remote from his hand and clicking the console off. "You're frowning so hard you'll give yourself wrinkles."

"I am _not _frowning," Duryodhana said, frowning.

"You need a drink," Shakuni said. He poured one and then added, "And a woman."

"Not you too," Duryodhana said. "I get enough of that from Grandpa Bhisma."

Shakuni shook his head. Bhisma was pestering Duryodhana to settle down with a wife because it was his duty as a king, because he needed to produce an heir, and because his one hundred and one younger siblings weren't allowed to marry themselves until Duryodhana did so first, despite the fact that many were already engaged in extremely public romances on the side. But Shakuni had a more important reason to want Duryodhana to find someone. Shakuni had seen the lust in Duryodhana's eyes when he looked at Draupadi; he had watched Duryodhana stare at the console in his private study every single evening for months on end, impatiently flipping away from any channel that _didn't_ show an image of Draupadi, his gaze fixed and cold. "You need to get over her," Shakuni said, handing Duryodhana a glass of wine.

Duryodhana looked startled. "Get over who?"

"Draupadi."

"What do you mean, 'get over her'? She's a whore. How _dare _you suggest that I would be…" He trailed off, then took the glass of wine from Shakuni's hand and finished grumpily, "She's probably already infested with diseases from Nakula."

Shakuni laughed. "And, so?" he asked, watching Duryodhana drink. "What are you going to do next? Wait for Yudhisthira and his brothers to drop dead from venereal diseases?" Shakuni watched Duryodhana carefully, gauging his reaction. "You're going to have to do something if you want to reunite your kingdom."

"I'm working on it," Duryodhana said. Then he added, "I spoke with Yudhisthira on Panchala. He's amazingly gullible, you know. And accommodating. He might even--"

"What? Just hand over Indraprastha to you?"

"He might. You don't know Yudhisthira like I do."

"I've at least observed him enough to note that he's changed," Shakuni said. "Yudhisthira has changed a lot since he gained Indraprastha. And now he has the Panchalan woman by his side, whispering into his ear every night, poisoning him against you. Do you think that _she _will ever give up Indraprastha to you?"

Duryodhana frowned again.

"When is the last time that you spoke to Yudhisthira, face-to-face?" Shakuni pressed.

"On Panchala," Duryodhana admitted. Then he added defensively, "We've been busy. And there's a time difference between here and Indraprastha. And--"

"That was months ago."

"I _know_."

"There's an old saying," Shakuni said. " 'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.' You have some advantages over Yudhisthira because you know him deeply. If you want to keep those advantages, you're going to have to stay in touch." He kept pressing. "Have you even been to Indraprastha yet?"

"…No."

"Well. That reflects poorly on you."

"Why so?"

"For diplomacy's sake. You really should make an appearance in Indraprastha."

"No," Duryodhana said quickly, "Not yet. I can't risk a confrontation with Yudhisthira in his own kingdom."

"But," Shakuni insisted, "You don't even know what that new kingdom looks or feels like. And you'd better know, because there's going to have to be a confrontation in the future." He poured Duryodhana another glass of wine. "Think of it as a reconnaissance mission. You need to scope out who Yudhisthira has become, what he's been up to, what sort of resources he has at his disposal. And a visit will be an important diplomatic gesture on your part."

Duryodhana swirled his wine thoughtfully in his glass. Finally he said, "If I go, you're coming with me."

Shakuni feigned surprise. "I am honored, Your Majesty."

"I'm sure you are," Duryodhana said, before dismissing Shakuni with a wave of his hand.

Shakuni bowed low, humbly, and left Duryodhana alone in his quarters. This was a step in the right direction, Shakuni mused. Shakuni was going to see Duryodhana, the sole and rightful ruler of this miserable fishing planet, _recognized_ as the sole and rightful ruler of this miserable fishing planet, no matter what the cost. Shakuni was going to push and pull and drag Duryodhana toward a unified throne whether he liked it or not. Fortunately, Duryodhana seemed very keen on the idea of a unified throne. That was good. Shakuni could work with that.

Shakuni was going to unite his nephew's kingdom. And if he had to tear down Dhritarashtra, Yudhisthira, and all the rest of the foul Kurus in the process, then so be it.

* * *

II.

There were always obstacles, though. Like the _other _people whom Duryodhana seemed to want to surround himself with. Distasteful people. Rude people. Disrespectful people.

"What are you doing out here?" Shakuni demanded, early the next morning, stomping across the dewy grass covering the sports field below Duryodhana's palace. "I've been calling your comm--"

"Oh! Sorry," Uluka said, shame-faced. "I turned it off. I--"

"I told him to turn off his comm," Karna said, calmly. "My apologies, Your Majesty." He bowed. "I did not want there to be distractions."

Shakuni bristled. At the time, it had seemed like a good decision to remove both himself and his son from the political situation on Gandhara, in order to enjoy an extended stay under Duryodhana's protection. But ever since Uluka had fallen in with Duryodhana's ill-bred friends, Shakuni was beginning to regret that decision.

Every morning Karna took his eldest son, Vrishasena, out to the archery range for tutoring. Uluka had begun to join them a few days ago. Karna had readily taken to training Shakuni's son in archery. And Shakuni didn't like that. But he could hardly say as much in front of Karna.

Vrishasena and Uluka were standing together in the grass, each holding a practice bow. Uluka had his head respectfully lowered, but Vrishasena did not. He peered at Shakuni with guarded eyes. Shakuni bristled again. He was the sovereign king of Gandhara. Vrishasena was the lowborn son of a low-ranking vassal king who wasn't even a real king. The astounding rudeness of the situation was—

"Did you need me, Father?" Uluka asked.

"_Yes_. I've arranged a tutor for you. Starting this morning."

"A tutor?"

"You're a prince. Until we return to Gandhara, you should at least be keeping up with your _real _studies. Put down that bow," he said.

Vrishasena watched Uluka slowly lower his bow with wide eyes. "Uluka," he said, his tiny round face both hurt and puzzled.

"I have to go," Uluka said.

"We can't practice together anymore?"

"Of course we can," Uluka said, reaching out to ruffle Vrishasena's curled hair. Vrishasena giggled and nearly dropped his bow. "Some other time, right?" Uluka said, glancing expectantly at both Karna and Shakuni in turn.

"Whatever time works for you," Karna answered, without waiting for Shakuni's permission.

"Thank you," Uluka said.

Shakuni reached for Uluka's hand, ready to drag him away from the scene, when suddenly he was stopped by a tug on his robes. He looked down, and saw that Vrishasena was pulling on his sleeve with his grubby little hands. "You're a king too!" Vrishasena exclaimed, apparently delighted.

"Don't--" Shakuni began to growl, but Vrishasena continued cheerfully. "That means that I know four kings!" Vrishasena mercifully let go of Shakuni's sleeve in order to count off on his hands. "I know Duryodhana, and Yudhissira, and Drupada, and you." He smiled up at Shakuni. "I don't have to go to school today! Because we're on the surface. I only have to go to school when we're in Anga."

Apparently having finally noticed that Shakuni was visibly bristling, Karna took Vrishasena's hand and pulled him away gently. "Sh, sh," he said. "Vrishasena, that's not the way that you behave in front of a king."

"It's not?" Vrishasena blinked up at his father. "But Duryodhana lets me--"

"Not every king is as nice as Duryodhana," Karna said.

Uluka laughed. Shakuni forced himself to laugh too, to at least let them know that he was in on the joke. "May I comm you later, sir?" Uluka asked Karna.

"When you get your schedule straightened out."

"Thank you," Uluka said again. Then he finally turned his attention toward Shakuni. "I'm ready to go, Father."

"Then let's go." Shakuni turned and walked briskly back toward the palace. Uluka followed close behind. When they were sufficiently out of Karna's earshot, Shakuni slowed down a step, waiting for Uluka to catch up. When Uluka was at his shoulder, Shakuni leaned his head toward his son and hissed at him, "You let them call you _by name_?!"

"Should I not?"

"You're a crown prince. They're lowborn commoners. They should know better than to act familiar with you. And you called that man _sir_?!"

"But he's my teacher!"

"A teacher of what? A useless sporting pastime?"

"I _asked_ him to teach me." Uluka's eyes lit up. "He says I'm really good! And I can get even better!" Uluka glanced back over his shoulder, at the distant figure of Karna crouched behind Vrishasena, helping his son assume a proper stance and lift his tiny child's bow. Shakuni recognized the look in Uluka's eyes. It was hero-worship, plain and simple. Shakuni wanted to vomit. Uluka turned back toward his father. "Please, Father. I didn't know that this would make you angry."

Shakuni finally sighed. "I'm not angry at you. I'm sorry. But," he added, taking Uluka's hand, "you _do _need to keep up with your studies."

Uluka squeezed his father's hand. "I will," he promised. Then he made a face. "I miss studying with Nana, though." He continued to walk beside his father in silence for a few moments, then asked, "When can I see Nana again?"

"When we can go home."

"So how much longer do we have to stay in exile?"

Shakuni froze in mid-step. "We are _not _in exile."

"But we can't go back to Gandhara."

"We can soon." Shakuni let go of Uluka's hand. "We _will _soon. I promise you."

Uluka said nothing, but looked sadly up at the sky.

* * *

III.

The preparations for the journey were going smoothly. Shakuni was pleased. Yudhisthira had been contacted and had enthusiastically agreed to host his cousin. A ship was being prepared to take them overseas. Gifts for Yudhisthira and his brothers were being prepared.

Everything was going smoothly, until the evening when Ashwatthama asked his question.

"How long will we be staying in Indraprastha?" Ashwatthama asked, as he gathered up the last of the supplies that he had used to clean and dress the statue of Shiva in Duryodhana's quarters. "Do you need me to bring anything in particular, Your Majesty?"

Duryodhana glanced over at Shakuni. Shakuni understood the question in Duryodhana's eyes; so he shook his head once, quickly. Duryodhana turned toward Ashwatthama and said briskly, "You're not coming."

Ashwatthama nearly dropped a vial of rose water that he was holding. "What?"

"I said, you're not coming. I need you to stay here with my father."

Ashwatthama stared at Duryodhana for a moment, his mouth hanging stupidly open. Then he said, "But I'm your priest. I'm supposed to travel with you everywhere."

"You're not _my _priest, you're _my family's _priest," Duryodhana said. "And I'm ordering you to stay here with my family."

Ashwatthama glanced once, coldly, in Shakuni's direction, then turned back toward Duryodhana. "Forgive me, Your Majesty, but that would go against protocol. You can't make a diplomatic visit without your priest." Ashwatthama's eyes were sharp, and his voice was even. Shakuni knew that the kid was smart, and that he understood what was really going on. Not that it did him any good.

"I can't make a diplomatic journey without _a _priest," Duryodhana corrected Ashwatthama. "Someone else from the High Council will accompany me."

Ashwatthama stared at the king again, then finally said, "Do I displease you, Your Majesty?"

"No," Duryodhana said. "But the rest of my family needs you. I can trust only you to look after them," he said. It was a lie, and they all knew it. But Ashwatthama could not say or do anything in the face of such an elegant lie. "You will stay here," Duryodhana repeated. "And now, Ashwatthama, you are dismissed. Leave me."

Ashwatthama gathered up his things and left, saying nothing.

When Ashwatthama was gone, Shakuni let out a small sigh of relief. "You handled that well," he said. "But I think your priest is angry. It was quite obvious that you were keeping him here just to spite Arjuna."

"Nah. Ashwatthama doesn't get angry. He took a vow never to feel anger." Duryodhana laughed. "What a little idiot." Then he mimicked Shakuni's sigh. "If it weren't for his Gift, I wouldn't even bother to keep him around."

"What is his Gift?"

Duryodhana shrugged. "I don't know. But it's yellow-level classified information. So it _has _to be good, right?" He smiled to himself, smugly. "I'll find out what it is eventually."

"I'm sure you will," Shakuni said. He stood and bowed his head to Duryodhana. "I must be retiring now."

"Fine, go."

Shakuni left, returning to the palace hallways that had grown quiet with the impending night. Shakuni walked through the palace for a while, thinking to himself, planning for the days ahead. He first began to sense that something was wrong when he was a security guard leaning his head against a wall, his face gray.

Shakuni passed by the guard and said nothing. If the foolish guard was too ill to be on duty, he really out to be making a comm call as soon as possible, Shakuni thought.

Shakuni walked a bit further, passing by a few more guards and servants. Then he saw another one who looked sick. This one was leaning over slightly, clutching her head, while a co-worker held her shoulders and asked what was wrong.

"Great. A plague," Shakuni muttered to himself. He stepped out of the palace and into a sunset-lit patch of garden, grateful for the chance to breathe in some fresh air.

That was when he heard the whispering.

_I'mincontrol I'mincontrol I'mincontrol I'mincontrol_

It was coming from everywhere, all around.

Shakuni stepped forward, between two trees. Then he quickly stepped back, lurking behind one of the trees. He saw Ashwatthama sitting on a bench, his bag of murti supplies discarded at his feet. His left hand was a fist clenched in his lap, his right hand clawing at his own thigh. His head was bowed low, and Shakuni couldn't see his face. But he could hear the whispering.

"I'm not upset. I'm in control. I'm not upset. I'm in control. I'm not upset. I'm in control." Over and over again. A mantra.

A useless mantra, apparently. Shakuni could feel something building up in the air all around him. An electricity. An energy. It felt hungry, and angry.

Suddenly Ashwatthama wasn't chanting anymore. He was breathing, heavily, like a drowning man. His head still bowed, one hand still clenched, the other hand still clawing at his own clothes and skin and flesh. "It's not time yet," he finally croaked. Then, "Go. Back. To. SLEEP!"

The last was a hiss that sliced through the electrified air, a verbal knife shredding the last slithers of writhing energy that Shakuni had felt crawling on his skin. Within moments, it was over. The air was calm again. There was nothing supernatural going on. There was just the light of the setting sun casting the entire garden in an eerie glow.

"Who's there?" Ashwatthama suddenly called out.

Shakuni stepped out from behind his tree, grinning sheepishly. "My apologies," he said, smooth and polite as could be. "I was taking an evening stroll and I thought I heard--"

"Did I make you sick?" Ashwatthama asked, brusquely. He was sitting on the bench in a normal position now, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his back straight, his head high. But he looked even paler than usual.

Shakuni blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"Do you feel unwell, Your Majesty?"

"No, I…. I feel fine."

"Good." Ashwatthama sighed. "Sometimes it just builds up so much energy, and I can't contain it all, and it tries to jump out of me and into other people but it just makes them…" He trailed off, then shook his head. "At least I didn't make myself sick this time," he mumbled to himself.

Shakuni said nothing. When a moment passed and Shakuni realized that Ashwatthama was merely waiting for him to leave, he turned around and did so without another word.

Shakuni debated asking Duryodhana if he knew the meaning behind Ashwatthama's strange words. But then he decided against it. Duryodhana already had his hands full, preparing for a diplomatic visit to what was clearly enemy territory, no matter how much certain parties may be in denial of that fact. The last thing that Duryodhana needed was more unnecessary distractions.

* * *

IV.

Finally, everything was packed. Finally, everyone was on board. Finally, the ship was ready to set sail. Uluka was leaning over a deck railing, waving wildly to some servants on the docks below. "Goodbye!" he called out. "Good-by-y-y-e!"

"You'll fall," Shakuni said. "And then the sea monsters will eat you."

"I can take them," Uluka said, flexing his arm muscles. "I'm strong."

"I know you are," Shakuni said with a laugh. He gently pulled Uluka down from the railing. "But you are also, unfortunately, extraordinarily tasty."

"I am?"

"Yes, you are. Those redfin would be all over you in an instant."

Uluka licked his own hand, pondering this.

Suddenly Shakuni's comm buzzed, loudly. "I have to go," he said, flipping it open just long enough to confirm what he already knew: the identity of his caller. "Go find your tutor," he told Uluka.

Shakuni found Duryodhana surrounded by aides, each holding an angrily buzzing comm unit out to him. "I've got that idiot Drona on one line still trying to yell at me about assigning Ashwatthama to a temple visit in Anga tomorrow," Duryodhana said, jabbing his thumb angrily in the direction of one aide, "and that idiot Arjuna on another line trying to ask about the same thing, and now I've got a call from Yudhisthira--"

"Take the one from Yudhisthira," Shakuni said quickly. "He won't want to talk about the Panchalans."

Duryodhana took one comm unit, then plugged it into a wall monitor and switched it on. "Yeah, I'm here," he said.

"I heard that you've already set sail!" Yudhisthira's voice came from the wall-speakers. "We're looking forward to your arrival. We--"

"Why did you call me?" Duryodhana snapped, impatiently. He motioned for his aides to leave the room, and they did. But Shakuni stayed.

"Ah… It may be too late to address this now, but… Arjuna is awfully upset that you refused the extension of our invitation to Ashwatthama."

Duryodhana shot Shakuni a cold glare. Shakuni shrugged, a bit sheepishly. Then Duryodhana turned his attention back to the speakers. "I _know _that Arjuna's upset. He's trying to call me right now."

"He is…?"

Shakuni heard footsteps from beyond the speakers, and a brief scuffling noise. Then Yudhisthira's voice, barely audible, coming from a great distance. "Arjuna, I'm on the line with him now… No, I told you to drop it…. Put _down _the comm, Arjuna, I told you I would – No, I will _not…._ Fine. We can continue this conversation later. I'm on the comm right now." Then another brief pause, the sound of footsteps again. Then Yudhisthira's voice was back, loud and strong and as clear as before. "Er, my apologies," he said. "I specifically told Arjuna not to bother you about this."

"And yet _you _are."

"Duryodhana, why not let--?"

"Because there's a very important festival in Anga tomorrow, and I told Ashwatthama to officiate. I'm sorry. This was planned months in advance. I can't pull my head priest out of the Angan festival at the last minute. You know how rude that would be."

"….Months in advance, was it?"

"Yes," Duryodhana said, even though both he and Shakuni knew that Ashwatthama had likely been in contact with Arjuna, and had likely told him otherwise. Which would have been the truth. And Arjuna would have told Yudhisthira. And Yudhisthira surely would have understood what was really going on.

Now, the only question was how far Yudhisthira would push the matter. How much guts he really had. How much he was willing to risk confronting Duryodhana with his own blatant lies, and whether or not Yudhisthira believed that Ashwatthama was worth risking a fight over.

"Well," Yudhisthira said, slowly. "If that is the case, then… I'm sorry to have bothered you. Duryodhana, you should have told me about the festival earlier."

Shakuni chuckled to himself. Same old spineless Yudhisthira. This visit was going to be easier than Shakuni had hoped in the first place.

"Yeah, sorry. I've been busy. Look, I have to go. I'll call you again when we get close to port." Without waiting for Yudhisthira's response, Duryodhana brusquely shut off the comm unit. Then he turned to Shakuni and said, "Diplomacy-wise, I'm beginning to think that keeping Ashwatthama in Hastinapura was a bad idea."

"No. It was the right idea," Shakuni said. "Whether a spoiled prince like Arjuna wants to play with his little friend or not, that's irrelevant. What matter is that Ashwatthama learns that you're his boss – and that you're the one who controls his schedule. He has to learn that he has a job to do, and duties to fulfill."

"A job to do and duties to fulfill, huh?" Duryodhana turned toward Shakuni. "And what is your duty to me?"

"I will do everything in my power to ensure that your kingdom is united, and that you will reign from your rightful throne," Shakuni said, bowing his head humbly. "I promise you that."

"Hmm," Duryodhana said. "Good answer."

* * *

V.

There were peasants waiting for them at the port. Low-born, unclean fishermen. Yudhisthira was there, too, and he proudly introduced a weathered village elder named Kritavarma to Duryodhana. Duryodhana actually bowed to the old man and made a show of respect. It was a good show. Even Shakuni, who knew a liar when he saw one, could believe in it.

Their party spent the night in the fishing village, being feasted and entertained by the peasants. Uluka listened wide-eyed as the fishermen regaled him with stories of fighting sea monsters. Shakuni pretended to listen to everyone and listened to no-one, save for Yudhisthira.

The next day, they finally set out for the city.

"We'll take the long route," Yudhisthira said, climbing into an RTV beside Duryodhana and Shakuni. "The view is more dramatic that way." He was smiling and cheerful. His eyes were brighter and sharper than Shakuni remembered. His complexion was different too, sun-darkened and smoother. Shakuni wasn't sure if he was imagining things, but Yudhisthira seemed to even have a little bit more meat on his bones than he recalled from before. Even at the wedding on Panchala, Yudhisthira had seemed slightly emaciated. He had always seemed slightly emaciated. But now that was no longer the case.

Their procession of RTVs climbed up a mountain ridge past a line of trees. "Here it is," Yudhisthira said, leaning slightly out of the RTV and pointing enthusiastically.

Suddenly the trees fell away, and the valley of Indraprastha was spread out before them. The view was breathtaking. A city of gold and silver, gleaming and new, surrounded in green, nestled in between two mountains. Looming over the city was an almost indescribable royal palace, composed of gleaming towers that rose in all sorts of disorganized, chaotic shapes; it was truly a building designed by architects not of this world. A moment's glance at the view of the city revealed other treasures: a calm canal lined with boats, public parks everywhere, fountains and flowers, and very little traffic on the streets or in the skys. At the base of the valley, a broad road connected the city to the rest of the continent – what little of it there was. There were a few cars on the road, a dozen hoverers in the sky above it, and nothing more.

Shakuni heard Duryodhana make a strange, strangled sound in the back of his throat.

"Neat, isn't it?" Yudhisthira said with a grin.

* * *

VI.

Shakuni wasn't sure if Yudhisthira was going to throw a parade in their honor, or simply slip them into the city while keeping a low profile. After the antics of the fishermens' village the previous night, Shakuni wasn't sure that he could stomach any more of these simple peasants' celebrations. Fortunately, they slipped into the city – and into the palace – relatively quietly. Shakuni and Duryodhana disembarked from their RTVs and were led into a splendid golden hall, where Draupadi was waiting for them. Yudhisthira walked right up to her and kissed her, and she laughed. Shakuni pretended not to notice Duryodhana quickly looking away from the spectacle, his expression dark. Then Draupadi turned and bowed her head slightly to Duryodhana. "Welcome, Your Majesty."

"It's an honor." Duryodhana, all charm and grace again, stepped smoothly forward and kissed her hand.

"Oh, my." Draupadi turned to Yudhisthira. "Are you going to let him get away with that?" she asked, teasingly.

"Hmm." Yudhisthira tapped his chin, thoughtfully. "Technically, I don't think that either of us has the authority to behead the other."

Duryodhana laughed, and clapped Yudhisthira on the shoulder. "See? I knew you had a sense of humor."

Shakuni rolled his eyes. Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice. Uluka stepped forward and bowed in front of Draupadi, mimicking Duryodhana. "Thank you for inviting my father and me," Uluka said, just as Shakuni had told him to do so earlier.

"It's my pleasure," Draupadi said, bending over so that she could look Uluka in the eye. "I haven't seen you since my wedding!" she said. "You look very handsome, Your Highness."

Uluka was beaming. "Mr. Kritavarma gave this to me!" he said, showing off the new ring that the villagers had honored him with the previous night.

"This way," Yudhisthira said. "I'll show you to your quarters." He led them and their entourage of aides through the hallways of the palace. The inside of the palace generally looked unremarkable – save for the occasional door that seemed to lead nowhere, the semi-transparent walls, and the occasional painting or sculpture that was clearly not of this world. Uluka stared wide-eyed at one painting, and when Yudhisthira noticed, he laughed and said, "A gandharva gave us that painting."

Uluka's eyes went even wider.

Finally, they arrived at their quarters. Shakuni's aides immediately took charge of unloading their luggage. Yudhisthira clapped his hands and said, "Well, I have to be off. Dinner in an hour. I told Bhima to be on his best behavior, so you should have nothing to worry about. Do you need anything?"

"No, we're good." Duryodhana quickly embraced his cousin, then pulled back. "Thank you for all of this, really."

Yudhisthira shook his head. "It's my pleasure. I've missed you."

"You're a king and a newlywed. You're not supposed to have time to miss me. Now go, shoo. We can take care of ourselves."

Yudhisthira left. Shakuni handed Uluka over to an aide and told him to settle Uluka into his own room. Then Shakuni and Duryodhana were left alone, in the beautiful study that was a part of Duryodhana's private guest quarters.

Duryodhana placed his hand on the back of a chair. Then he lifted his hand, and lowered it to the surface of a small table, placing his palm flat against it. He hissed through his teeth, then lifted up his hand again, and this time touched a wall.

"What are you doing?" Shakuni asked.

"Can't you feel that?" Duryodhana asked.

"Feel what?"

"This place… It's made entirely of maya…"

Shakuni rolled his eyes. "Feels fine to me."

Duryodhana lifted his hand and looked at Shakuni for a long time. He was getting good at hiding his thoughts, Shakuni observed, a bit ruefully. Duryodhana's face was blank, and his eyes were guarded. Shakuni couldn't tell what he was thinking. Finally Duryodhana shook his head and mumbled, "It must be my imagination. Sorry." Then he pulled out his comm unit and dialed. "I have to talk to Dusshasana. You should unpack."

"Of course, Your Majesty."

Shakuni finished overseeing his own servants settle his things into his room, and was back in Duryodhana's study less than half an hour later. When Shakuni entered, Duryodhana was pacing back and forth across the room, a comm held to his ear, saying, "Yes… Yes. I does feel that way. I don't know how to describe it… Like a feedback loop. It makes me feel…" He trailed off, and saw Shakuni standing in his doorway. "Stronger," he said, and then clicked off the comm unit.

"I'm sorry," Shakuni said. "Did I interrupt your call to Dusshasana?"

"Hmm? No. I was talking to Yuyutsu." Duryodhana must have noticed the mixed look of disgust and disbelief that Shakuni was helpless to prevent from momentarily crossing his face, so he quickly said, "It was nothing important." He put away his comm unit, and pulled Shakuni into the study, closing the door behind him. "Listen," he said. "This place…" He trailed off, frowning, as if unsure how to continue.

Shakuni waited patiently.

"It's like a focal point," Duryodhana said. "Of maya."

"…All right…"

"Which is why it shouldn't belong to Yudhisthira!" Duryodhana hissed. "He's part deva! He doesn't belong inside these walls. This palace was never meant to be his."

"So…" Shakuni did not like the wild look in Duryodhana's eyes. "Are you saying that it should belong to you?"

"Yes! This place was _made _for me. It…" He trailed off again, frowning to himself, still unsure what to say. Shakuni really didn't like the wild, desperate look in Duryodhana's eyes now. He liked Duryodhana's usual way of thinking. He wanted Duryodhana to want the kingdom that he deserved. But Shakuni needed Duryodhana to stay calm, and to keep focused. This new wild energy of his was unpredictable – potentially explosive, but also potentially useless.

"I can feel it," Duryodhana finally said. "It's kind of hard to explain, but I can feel it in my bones, down deep inside of me. This palace – this city – they've been waiting for me."

"Of course," Shakuni said brusquely. Then he looked at his watch pointedly. "Being late for dinner, however, will not do much to help you with your cause."

"Oh. Right." Duryodhana straightened up his dinner jacket and brushed back his hair with his hand. The transformation was instantaneous. He was once again calm, cool, collected, and in control. "Is Uluka coming with us?"

"I sent him ahead with the nanny." Shakuni finally managed to get Duryodhana out the door and into a hallway. Two aides from Yudhisthira's court flanked them as they walked toward the dining hall. "Uluka seems to be enjoying himself," Shakuni said, conversationally. "But, you know, he's easily impressed."

Duryodhana laughed. Good, Shakuni thought. He was supposed to look like he was having fun. Neither he nor Shakuni were supposed to betray by their facial expressions the fact that they were about to dine in dangerous enemy territory.

The two of them stepped into a great, open-air hall with a pool in the center and breezy balconies lining both sides. "Nice place," Duryodhana said, glancing around appreciatively. Shakuni did not miss the hunger in his eyes, though. "It reminds me of--"

Then his face smashed into what seemed like thin air.

Duryodhana stumbled backward, holding his nose, cursing. "What in the--?"

"It's glass," Shakuni said, placing his hand on the solid but invisible wall in front of them. "I think." He turned toward the two aides and snapped angrily, "What is the meaning of this?!"

The aides looked flabbergasted. "There was not a wall there this morning," one of the aides said.

"But sometimes…" The other aide glanced nervously at Duryodhana. "Sometimes this palace is tricky, Your Majesty."

"Tricky, huh." Shakuni ran his hand along the glass wall until he found an opening. "Come on," he said to Duryodhana. "Do you need medical attention, or should we--?"

"I'm fine," Duryodhana said, holding his head high, sniffing back a drop of blood from his nose. "It's nothing. Let's go." Then Duryodhana stepped through the opening in the glass wall and straight into the pool in the center of the hall.

Shakuni blinked, stunned. The pool in the center of the hall happened to be at least twenty steps in front of him. Yet there Duryodhana was, coughing and spluttering as he struggled to climb out of the pool, which certainly didn't look as if it could possibly have been that deep—

"Your Majesty!" Shakuni exclaimed, rushing forward – it took him several leaping steps, he noted – to the edge of the pool. "Are you--?"

"No, I am NOT all right," Duryodhana snapped, grabbing Shakuni's arm and using it to pull himself out of the pool. His clothes were soaked, his hair dripping, his face twisted with fury. He managed to get himself completely out of the pool, then turned around, and dipped his hand into the water. It was only as deep as his wrist. Yet mere moments before, he had been sunk into deep water up to his neck. He lifted his hand and muttered, "What in the hell…?"

Suddenly, there was the sound of a door slamming, and footsteps. Yudhisthira burst into the hall from the other end. He took one look at Duryodhana, and his eyes went wide. His hands flew to his mouth in horror. "What happened to you?!" he asked. Behind him were a handful of aides, one holding a comm that was still turned on. Shakuni saw Draupadi and Yudhisthira's brothers stepping into the hall behind him, gawking like idiots.

"I don't _know_ what happened to me," Duryodhana said, standing up angrily, managing to splash Shakuni in the process. "I was _walking _and then I--"

And then Duryodhana was in the center of the pool again.

For a moment, Shakuni continued to blink stupidly at the sight in front of him, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Duryodhana had been standing beside him a moment before. And now, Duryodhana was in the center of the pool again. Only this time, the pool was shallow, and he was standing in water that was only as deep as his ankles. Duryodhana also blinked, stupidly, as if he couldn't quite comprehend how or why he had just been moved from point A to point B.

"Whoa," said Nakula.

Duryodhana stood in the center of the pool, his feet soaked through, his fists trembling with rage. "I demand to know--!" he began, but never finished, because at that moment, something beneath his feet shifted. Duryodhana slipped, dramatically, and landed on his rear with a comic splash.

For a moment, there was nothing but stunned silence in the hall.

Then Shakuni heard laughter.

It was Draupadi, standing at Yudhisthira's side, her hand clapped over her mouth, her shoulders trembling, trying and failing to contain her giggles. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice trembling to match her shoulders, "I'm sorry, it's just--"

"Just the funniest thing I've seen in my entire life," Nakula stated, deadpan.

And that did it. Draupadi, Yudhisthira's brothers, and the aides in the hall all burst into raucous laughter. Draupadi was clutching her stomach and nearly bent over, she was laughing so hard; Bhima's bellowing laughter seemed to shake the walls themselves; Arjuna had one hand on Sahadeva's shoulder and the two of them were giggling uncontrollably, like little girls. Shakuni looked over at Duryodhana, who was still sitting on his arse in the middle of the reflecting pool, his wet clothes stuck to his body in sodden lumps, his face twisting and darkening with rage.

Then Shakuni looked at Yudhisthira. Yudhisthira clapped one hand over his mouth and chuckled, softly.

Shakuni saw that Duryodhana saw that, too.

Duryodhana stood up quickly, hissing, his teeth bared. "Stop laughing!" he shouted. "_Stop laughing!_"

The laughing stopped, abruptly. Yudhisthira finally had the good grace to look horrified again. He stepped toward Duryodhana, his hands outstretched. "Calm down," he said. "It's just the palace acting up. It happens sometimes. Please don't be angry. Look, we'll get you a change of clothes, some nice wine…" He trailed off when he saw the look on Duryodhana's face. Then he forced himself to smile, somewhat unconvincingly. "Come on," he said. "You know we'll both be laughing about this as soon as--"

"I fail to see," Duryodhana said, through clenched teeth, "just what is so funny about this." He waded across the reflecting pool toward Yudhisthira, and then stepped out slowly, his demeanor dark and menacing. Shakuni had never seen him so angry before. "Is this the way that your palace treats its guests?"

Yudhisthira opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly, from behind him, came Sahadeva's voice. "No," Sahadeva said. "This is how the palace punishes people." He stepped forward, somberly. "If one of us says or does something bad, we get punished. The same thing happened to Nakula when he tried to take apart a weather vane--"

"It wasn't the same, it was worse," Nakula said with a derisive snort. Then he turned toward Duryodhana. "Look, it happens to all of us sometimes. Except to Yudhisthira, but whatever. You've got to just laugh it off, okay? There's no use being a prick about it."

"You must've said or done something that the palace didn't like," Arjuna pointed out, redundantly.

"This is crazy," Duryodhana spluttered, "and you're crazy!" he added, inelegantly. Then he snarled at Yudhisthira, "If your horrible maya palace had a habit of randomly attacking people, you could have at least warned me!"

"No, no, it's not like that at all," Yudhisthira said, soothing and pleadingly at the same time, "It's just the maya, it's just trying to have a little fun with you. Listen, about that wine--"

"No," Draupadi said, loudly, from behind Yudhisthira. "This isn't one of the maya's little pranks." She turned her cold eyes toward Duryodhana. "You must have done something, I mean _really_ done something sinful, in order to earn this punishment. What did you do?"

"Draupadi, that's enough," Yudhisthira said, a bit tersely. Draupadi, however, tossed her hair over her shoulder in a gesture clearly dismissive of Yudhisthira's reprimand. Yudhisthira chose to ignore this. He turned back toward Duryodhana, all pleading and pleasing again. "I am so, so sorry about this," he said. "And look at you, you're shivering. We have to get you out of those clothes. Come on," Yudhisthira said, gently taking Duryodhana's hand and leading him away from the pool. "I really do have a lovely wine that I'd like you to try. We can--"

That was when Duryodhana's foot smashed into something unseen, and he fell sprawling to the ground, nearly dragging Yudhisthira with him.

"Blind as a bat and as stupid, too," Draupadi said, loudly. "Just like his father."

Bhima and the others burst into laughter again. Yudhisthira glanced around helplessly, panicked, unsure of what to do, too incompetent to even offer Duryodhana a hand. Duryodhana staggered back to his feet, his face bright red, his entire body trembling with rage. Shakuni suddenly had the sense – a gut feeling, really – that something terrible was about to happen. It was Duryodhana. Something was building up, inside and around Duryodhana. Something angry. Something powerful.

Suddenly it was very, very cold in the hall.

Shakuni rushed forward, grabbed Duryodhana's shoulders, and pulled him away and out of the hallway as fast he could, before something disastrous – although he wasn't sure exactly what – could happen. "We won't be coming to dinner!" Shakuni shouted over his shoulder and he and Duryodhana hurriedly left the hall, still filled with the stinging sounds of laughter, behind them.

* * *

VII.

"Did you see that?!" Duryodhana snarled, tearing off his wet clothes and tossing them angrily around his quarters, "Did you _see that?!_" He tore at his wet hair, almost mindless with rage. "_Did you hear what that bitch said about MY FATHER?!_"

"I heard," Shakuni said, "and if you don't lower your voice, I'm going to have to pay off every guard in this wing of the palace to prevent them from leaking to the tabloids that you just called Indraprastha's queen a--"

"_I AM NOT SHOUTING!_"

"You're right. I'd say that 'screaming like a gandharva with its hand chopped off' would be the more accurate term."

Duryodhana finally shut his mouth. He stood, silent and half-naked, breathing heavily, his entire body trembling with barely-contained rage. "They can't treat me like this," he said. "The can't get away with this."

And slowly, Shakuni began to grin. He could see everything that he needed to know in Duryodhana's eyes. It was time to take Yudhisthira down. And Duryodhana was finally willing to do it. "You're right," Shakuni agreed, again. "And we _won't_ let them get away with this."

Duryodhana paused in the middle of toweling off his hair. "Yeah? How so?"

Shakuni was about to answer, but then the comm unit buried in a pile of Duryodhana's wet clothes started buzzing loudly. Shakuni shook his head at Duryodhana. Answering that call would be a bad idea right now. But Duryodhana, clearly intent on ignoring Shakuni's advice, picked up the comm unit and clicked it on. "What?" he snapped, tersely. He listened for a moment, then his face grew thunderously dark. "No," he hissed. "No, we won't be coming back for dinner. In fact, we won't be staying here a moment longer. As soon as I get some dry clothes on, we're leaving. Got it?" Without waiting for a response, Duryodhana clicked off the comm.

Shakuni nodded, somberly. "This is the right decision," he said. Duryodhana would do well to stick up for himself, and to refuse to stay where he was clearly disrespected and unwelcome.

"You're going to have to tell Uluka that we're leaving," Duryodhana said, tossing aside his comm unit.

"In a moment," Shakuni said, quickly. "Right now, you and I need to talk." And they needed to talk right away, Shakuni understood instinctively. They needed to talk while Duryodhana's anger was still sharp and his humiliation still fresh in his mind. They needed to talk while Shakuni could still turn that anger and humiliation into forward momentum.

"What about?" Duryodhana asked, a bit impatiently.

"I know how to destroy Yudhisthira," Shakuni said, bluntly.

Duryodhana's eyes widened. "I can't kill him," he said. "We'd never get away with it."

Shakuni almost felt like laughing. He was impressed that murder was the first place that Duryodhana's thoughts went to. "No," Shakuni said. "We're not going to kill anybody. In fact, we're not even going to hurt Yudhisthira. Not physically. All we have to do is publically humiliate him, ensure that his own followers loathe him, strip him of his kingdom and all of his worldly possessions, and then hand everything that Yudhisthira once owned over to you, where it rightfully belongs."

Duryodhana snorted. "You make it sound so easy."

"It is easy."

"All right. How?"

"With these," Shakuni said, pulling a small lacquered box, no larger than his thumb, from the pocket inside his robes where he always, always kept it safe and hidden.

"What is that?" Duryodhana asked.

Shakuni glanced to his left, then to his right. They were alone in the room, but still… "Not here," Shakuni said. "If these walls can attack you, then they can also listen to us." He slipped the box back inside his robes. "If you'll excuse me," he said, rather loudly, "I have to find Uluka. You and I can continue this conversation once we're seabound, Your Majesty."

Shakuni left Duryodhana with a hungry, curious look in his eyes. That was good, Shakuni thought. No, better than good. That was perfect.

Duryodhana had finally been pushed over the edge. And Yudhisthira was finally doomed.

* * *

VIII.

Yudhisthira stood between them and the RTVs, blocking their escape. "Duryodhana, I can't let you leave like this," Yudhisthira said, calmly, refusing to wither under the murderous glare that Duryodhana was giving him. "I can't let you leave with something this awful still hanging between us. I cannot do so as a king, I cannot do so as a host, and I cannot do so as your cousin!"

"This is a fine time for you to be throwing those words back at us," Shakuni said, coldly. "Where was your generous hospitality when you stood back and allowed your cursed palace to attack Duryodhana? Where was your sense of familial loyalty when you _laughed _at Duryodhana's injuries? Where was your royal dignity when you allowed your queen to insult _my _honorable brother-in-law? You've already failed as a king, as a host, and as a cousin."

Yudhisthira regarded Shakuni evenly. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but I was speaking to Duryodhana."

Shakuni saw red. How dare he! How _dare _he! How _dare _that damn fisherman king – that filthy usurper – that pathetic Kuru _– _how _dare _he speak to the king of Gandhara like that!

And how _dare _he finally grow a spine, after all of these years!

Shakuni swallowed his trembling rage, and forced himself not snap back at the idiot king. He was well aware of the fact that Uluka and all of his servants were watching him with wide eyes. Outwardly, Shakuni remained calm. Inwardly, however, he was seething. This was not the Yudhisthira that Shakuni remembered from before, not at all. This was a new Yudhisthira, a stronger Yudhisthira. A more threatening Yudhisthira.

Shakuni knew in that moment that he and Duryodhana had no more time to lose. They had to destroy Yudhisthira, and soon. This new Yudhisthira was unpredictably powerful, and therefore unpredictably treacherous. He was an obstacle standing in the way of the reunification of the Kuru kingdom. He had to be removed as soon as possible.

Thankfully, for the time being, Duryodhana was still every bit as strong and as stubborn as he had ever been, which still made him stronger and more stubborn by far than Yudhisthira was. "Move aside, Yudhisthira," Duryodhana said, his demeanor calm, but his voice dark with implied threats. "If you truly do value the relationship between us, then stand aside and let my uncle and I leave now. I refuse to stay in any palace where I am clearly unwelcome. And if I have to spend even one more moment anywhere near Draupadi or Bhima or _you_, then I very well might say or do something that I would reallyregret."

Yudhisthira looked as if he'd been slapped across the face by Duryodhana's words. "Did you just say that you cannot stand to be around me?"

"I did just say that, yes." Duryodhana's eyes narrowed. "Why would I believe for even a second that the feeling isn't mutual? Your palace _attacked _me, remember? Clearly you don't want me around, therefore I no longer wish to be around you. Let me leave, Yudhisthira, and we can easily solve both of our problems."

"Duryodhana, _please!_" Yudhisthira begged. "Please don't say such horrible things! That you would even _think _that I wanted to cast you out of my own palace, I--"

"If it wasn't you, then it must have been Draupadi or one of your brothers who didn't want me here anymore," Duryodhana said, calmly. "Or do you have some other explanation for the insults that your very palace itself just inflicted upon me?"

Yudhisthira shook his head, miserably. "I have no other explanation," he said.

Shakuni realized that the pathetic king looked miserable precisely because he could no longer deny the truth behind Duryodhana's words. The other members of Yudhisthira's disgusting family clearly did loathe Duryodhana, and clearly did not want him to stay in their enchanted palace. Yudhisthira, hypocritically righteous as he was, could not lie to Duryodhana about that part, nor could he deny the truth of it.

So much for growing a spine, then.

Inwardly, Shakuni was relieved to see Yudhisthira suddenly deflated. Just when he had been fearing that Yudhisthira had grown strong enough to be a serious threat, along came Yudhisthira's self-destructive sense of honesty to turn his steely resolve into spoiled mush.

Shakuni had little patience for useless honesty. Honesty had never gotten him anywhere in life, after all. Honesty was a weakness. An honest king was a weak, unworthy king. Yudhisthira was a weak, unworthy king. Honesty was what had made Yudhisthira laugh at Duryodhana's fall in the pool, and honesty was what had driven Draupadi to say those heinous things that she had said about Shakuni's admittedly heinous brother-in-law. That was behavior deeply unbecoming of a king and a queen. As far as Shakuni was concerned, Yudhisthira's honesty proved more than anything that he needed to be removed from his throne as soon as possible

"Stand aside, Yudhisthira," Duryodhana said, "or I will have my bodyguards push you aside. I hope that it will not have to come to that, especially not in front of Uluka," Duryodhana said, casting a meaningful glance at Shakuni's wide-eyed, frightened son. "But the choice is yours."

Yudhisthira looked Duryodhana straight in the eye. "You are making a mistake, Duryodhana," he said. "You should not leave Indraprastha like this." But nevertheless, he finally stood aside.

That was it, then. The confrontation was over. Duryodhana walked silently past Yudhisthira, and climbed into a waiting RTV. Shakuni took Uluka's hand and followed Duryodhana. Behind them came their servants and bodyguards, carrying their luggage.

Yudhisthira stood still and did not say another word, watching in horror as Uluka and Shakuni somberly climbed into the RTV behind Duryodhana. Uluka, at least, was genuinely somber. Shakuni had to work hard to disguise his elation as somberness.

The engine of the RTV rumbled to life. The sound of the engine seemed to panic Yudhisthira. So the stupid, incompetent, useless king mustered up his courage for one last round of begging. "Duryodhana, listen to me," he said, grabbing onto the RTV door nearest to where Duryodhana was sitting. "You can't leave like this! Neither of us will be able to--"

"I really don't care what the tabloids will say or what kind of rumors your staff will spread," Duryodhana said, coolly. "All I know is that I'm not going to stay where I'm not welcome." And then, without waiting for a reply from Yudhisthira, Duryodhana snapped his fingers at the RTV driver. The vehicle rumbled away, out into the city streets.

Shakuni glanced in the driver's mirror and caught a glimpse of Yudhisthira standing behind them, receding in the distance. Yudhisthira stood and watched them leave with his usual helpless, hopeless expression on his face. He was an utterly useless king, too incompetent to do anything but whine and beg and then stand and watch silently when things didn't go his way. Shakuni felt a knot of disgust twist in his stomach when he saw Yudhisthira just _standing _there like a drooling idiot.

Well, at least Indraprastha wouldn't be saddled with such a useless king for much longer.

* * *

IX.

They were able to reach the coast and set sail that night. Uluka, however, seemed quite disappointed to be back on board the ship, and heading back to Hastinapura.

"Why did we have to leave so early?" he finally asked, having saved up the question until the moment when Shakuni was tucking him into bed.

"Because Yudhisthira and his family said some mean things to us," Shakuni said.

Uluka's chin trembled. "But… they're our family…." He settled morosely down into his blankets. "Family isn't supposed to hurt each other."

Shakuni, sitting on the edge of Uluka's bed, looked down at his son for a long, long time. Then he said quietly, "I love you, Uluka."

Uluka's face lit up into a brilliant smile. "I love you too, Papa."

"And in some ways, I hope that you never grow up," Shakuni said. Then he stood up and stepped out of Uluka's room, closing the door behind him quietly.

Shakuni returned to his own quarters, only to find Duryodhana already there, waiting with a bottle of wine and two glasses. "He's too old for you to be tucking him in at night," Duryodhana said, bluntly.

"He's only eleven," Shakuni said. "And in a sense, he's still young for his age."

"You like to keep him that way, don't you?" Duryodhana said, pouring a glass of wine. "What, are you afraid that if he grows up, he'll finally start to figure out your – and his – political situation?"

Shakuni accepted the glass that Duryodhana offered him. "You didn't come here just to psychoanalyze my parenting and discuss my political _situation_, did you?" he asked, a bit more snappishly than he intended to.

Duryodhana regarded Shakuni evenly for a moment, then poured himself a glass of wine, and said, "You're right." Then he set down the wine bottle and said, "So, show me this thing of yours. This thing that can destroy Yudhisthira. And," Duryodhana added, gesturing angrily with his wine class, "it had better be good. And I mean _foolproof._ If we try to screw up Yudhisthira and don't get it right the first time, we won't get a second chance. And I'll lose everything."

"I know," Shakuni said. "Believe me, I know how high the stakes are. And I wouldn't be showing you this," he said, pulling his box out of his robes again, "if I didn't know that it would work."

Shakuni opened the box, and shook out its contents into his palm.

Duryodhana raised one eyebrow, incredulous. "_Dice_?" He nearly spilled his wine again. "You think I can ruin Yudhisthira with a pair of dice?!"

"These aren't just a pair of dice," Shakuni said. "These are a pair of dice that never, ever lose."

Duryodhana gave him a bemused look. "Riiiiiiight."

"These dice," Shakuni said somberly, "are carved from the bones of my father. Your grandfather. They were made by an asura and given to me in exchange for… a price. But they never lose. These dice always do my bidding. Which, unfortunately, is why I can't actually use them all that often," Shakuni said, with a rueful chuckle. "If I used these dice all the time, I'd be accused of cheating far more often than I already am."

Duryodhana was still looking at Shakuni as if he thought that this uncle had finally gone senile. "You've had contact with an asura," he said. "Sure you have."

"Do you find that so hard to believe?"

"Asuras are extinct."

"And yet your cousin met one, and that asura turned around and built him an enchanted palace," Shakuni pointed out, calmly. "Asuras are still among us, Duryodhana. And if there's one thing that your cousin Yudhisthira and I share in common, it's this: we have both been served, and served well, by the powers of an asura."

Duryodhana gave Shakuni a long, hard, unreadable look. Then, slowly, he stretched out his free hand, and let it hover above Shakuni's open palm where the dice were sitting. Something seemed to light up in Duryodhana's eyes. He reached down, scooped up the dice from Shakuni's hand, and held them in his clenched fist. Now his face looked simply amazed, his eyes full of wonder. "You're telling the truth," Duryodhana whispered. "I can feel--" Then he shook his head, quickly, cutting off his own sentence. "You're right," he finally said, returning the dice to Shakuni's hand. Then, slowly, Duryodhana began to grin. "I'm listening," he said.

"Say, for example, Yudhisthira," Shakuni continued, after taking a sip of his wine. "Everybody knows that he has a gambling problem. If you challenge him to a game of dice and let me roll on your behalf, using these babies, then… Well, then Yudhisthira will be finished. He won't stop betting until he's lost everything. And nobody will suspect any sort of cheating or intervention on our behalf, because they know that Yudhisthira's an addict anyway." Shakuni rolled the dice in his hand, feeling their soothing, pleasant little bumps and ridges rub against his palm. "All that we have to do is give the poor addict an appropriately public venue to in which to let him completely self-destruct, as spectacularly as possible. And then he'll be ruined forever. And the kingdom will be yours."

Duryodhana sipped his wine and nodded, thoughtfully. "You think he'll go as far as to bet his kingdom?"

"I told you. Yudhisthira has an addiction. He also has a weak will. You're strong, Duryodhana, so you may not understand what a terrible demon an addiction can be. But Yudhisthira is weak, and he won't stop until he has nothing left."

"Are you certain," Duryodhana asked, "that Yudhisthira is truly as weak as you say? Because I fear that his will has only grown stronger since he gained Indraprastha."

"No, no, he is still weak," Shakuni said quickly, soothing Duryodhana's fears. "I have heard rumors, Duryodhana, especially among my fellow gamblers. It takes very little for Yudhisthira to lose control to the dice."

"Draupadi will never let that happen. She'll interfere and stop the game before it goes too far."

"Then we'll have to make sure that Draupadi isn't by Yudhisthira's side during the game," Shakuni said, smoothly. "That should be easy. Have your mother and Dusshala invite Kunti and Draupadi to their own private gathering. Draupadi has expressed her disgust with Yudhisthira's gambling before, and I'd be willing to bet money that she would rather spend time with her fellow brainless, giggling women than she would spend time at a boring dice game."

Duryodhana nodded again, then sipped his wine again and muttered, "This is crazy."

"What is?"

"This. All of this. I can't believe it. I can't believe I'm sitting with you in this room right now, and plotting to humiliate and destroy a member of _my family _with a pair of magical demon-dice."

Shakuni suddenly felt alarmed. "Are you getting cold feet?" he asked.

Duryodhana said nothing.

"Don't you remember what happened in Indraprastha?" Shakuni hissed, realizing that he had to push as hard and as fast as he could right that moment, realizing that if Duryodhana backed down now he might never be able to convince him to strike again. "How they insulted you? How they laughed at you? Don't you remember _Panchala_?! The lies, the deceit, the fact that they all got away with it? Do you want _those _people in charge of the kingdom that ought to be yours?" Shakuni pressed and pressed, not bothering to hold back anything anymore. "This isn't for you," he said. "This is for Kuru. You have to reunite the kingdom, Duryodhana. And the only way to do that is to destroy Yudhisthira. Expose him for the fraud that he is. Give your people a reason to revile and abandon him. It is only as much as he deserves."

Duryodhana looked down at his wine glass, then up at Shakuni. "There's a problem with this plan," he said.

"Which would be?"

"The inspection," he said. "Before a formal dice match between royals, the host's royal priest inspects the dice in a ceremony to ensure that there is no cheating involved. It's just a silly ceremony, but it's a tradition, and we can't skip over it." He pointed to the dice in Shakuni's hand. "Those things are crawling with maya. Ashwatthama will sense it right away."

Shakuni contemplated this for a moment, then asked quietly, "Your devakin friends. The priest, Ashwatthama, and also that Karna of yours. How honest are they?"

"Very," Duryodhana answered, without hesitation. "And they're both, you know, _religious_. About everything."

"Then they can never know about this," Shakuni said.

Duryodhana was silent for a moment, then nodded somberly. "But I told you, Ashwatthama can sense--"

"He won't, because I'm going to give him a pair of normal dice to inspect," Shakuni said.

"And how are you going to accomplish this?" Duryodhana asked. "The handover and inspection happens in front of a crowd. And then the priest hands you back your dice and you start playing right away."

"I handle it like this," Shakuni said, as he closed his hand around his dice and twisted his wrist slightly. A moment later, he opened up his hand again, and a completely different set of dice were in his palm.

"Sleight of hand," Duryodhana said. "You must be joking."

"I'm not joking."

"You're going to fool Ashwatthama and everybody else with a simple parlor trick?"

"Yes," Shakuni said.

Duryodhana poured himself another glass of wine. "This is crazy," he said, again.

"It most certainly is not. Listen, you--"

"No, you listen," Duryodhana suddenly said, coldly. "A year ago – a month ago – even a few weeks ago, if you had asked me if I would ever consider doing this to Yudhisthira, I would have said no. For a long time I've known that I_ have_ to get back his half of the kingdom. I've known that since long before the first time that you and I ever talked about it together. And I've known for a long time that doing so would probably involve hurting Yudhisthira –a lot. But I'm willing to do it. Believe me, I'll do what I have to do in order to save this kingdom. I'll destroy Yudhisthira, if that's what it takes. But once we start this thing, you and I – we can't screw it up. I told you, there won't be a second chance. If we fail in this, and if anybody finds out what we tried to do – then that's it. We're finished. So if we're going to do this, I want you to promise me. I want you to promise me that you'll go as far as I need you to go, and that you'll do anything that I need you to do, in order to make this work." Duryodhana took a deep breath. "Is that understood?"

Shakuni bowed his head low. "Yes, Your Majesty."

"And you're right. Nobody can ever know about this. Not Karna, not Ashwatthama, not Dusshasana, not any of them. Just you, and me." Duryodhana suddenly grabbed Shakuni's shoulder. "Swear to me," he hissed.

"I swear to you," Shakuni said solemnly. "I – and my dice – are yours."

Duryodhana let go of Shakuni's shoulder and slowly stood up. Shakuni realized that he was trembling slightly, his glass of wine jittering in his hands. "So," he said. "So we're really going to do this thing."

"Yes. We are."

"Then a toast," Duryodhana said, raising his glass high. "To vice," he said. "May Yudhisthira drown in his own."

"He will," Shakuni said. "All that you need to do is give him a little push."

* * *

To be continued.


	22. Chapter 11: Dice

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER ELEVEN: DICE

* * *

"No," Draupadi said, for the fifteenth time. "My answer is still no."

"But you can't say no," Yudhisthira said, tirelessly keeping up with her angry pacing. "Look, we've all had to do it--"

"That's because you're barbarians. And it's a barbaric practice. And there's no reason for me to submit myself to the Council because my Gift is passive and non-dangerous." Draupadi suddenly stopped in mid-step and turned to face Yudhisthira. "Don't you ever wonder what the Council does with all of that information that they scan out of you, anyway?"

"I know what they do with it. They use it to make sure that no devakin ever manifests a Gift that he's unable to control."

"And has that ever happened?" Draupadi asked, pointedly. When Yudhisthira didn't answer, she pressed on. "The gods wouldn't give us Gifts that we aren't able to control. I trust the gods more than I trust an ineffectual group of withered old men." She crossed her arms over her chest. "And you let them bag and tag you just like animals."

"It's just a scan and a chip in the ear--"

"And I'm not going to subject myself to either."

"You can't refuse. It's one of Kuru's oldest laws. Gifts cannot be used without the permission of the High Council. The chip symbolizes that permission. You're a Kuru now, and--"

" 'And even a queen isn't above the law,' right?" Draupadi sighed, wearily. Then she looked up at Yudhisthira and asked, "Do I have to go through with the scan? I could just, I don't know, _demonstrate_ my Gift for them."

Yudhisthira raised one eyebrow. "You'd rather set yourself on fire than go through the scanning process? You know, it doesn't hurt _that _much."

"It's not about the pain. It's about the principle of the thing." She reached up, gently, and touched the skin behind Yudhisthira's ear, running her fingers along the base of his ear until she found the hard lump of his implant. "And you want to tell me that this doesn't hurt?"

"Er, it did get infected once. But that was just once." Yudhisthira took Draupadi's other hand. "Next week I have an appointment to get my chip updated. You can come with me then. We'll get this over with, and then--"

"And then the Council will leave you alone, right?"

"I can't keep them off your back forever."

"But you tried. And I appreciate that, I do." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Then she paused and said, "Wait. They make _you _update your chip even though you don't have a Gift?"

"I do have a Gift," Yudhisthira said, quickly. "I just don't know what it is, and I can't use it. Yet."

"That means that it must be something powerful." Draupadi winked at him. "The longer it takes and the harder it is for a Gift to manifest, the more powerful it is." She turned away from Yudhisthira and said, "I'm going back inside. Will I see you tonight?"

"Absolutely."

Draupadi walked back across the expanse of the palace gardens that she had so angrily paced through a moment before. Yudhisthira watched her leave, then breathed a sigh of relief, and turned away from the palace. He wandered further into the gardens until he came to a clearing with a reflecting pool and a single majestic tree growing beside it. Yudhisthira sat down beneath the shade of the tree, not particularly caring if the grass or dirt stained his royal robes, and leaned back against the tree trunk.

This was his favorite spot in the entirety of the palace grounds. This was the tree that the gandharvas had transplanted into the ground – brought, originally, from another dimension, Yudhisthira suspected – to serve as a memorial for Yudhisthira's father.

It had been Bhima's idea, originally. When the gandharvas had first come down to the earth and had first started laying out the city of Indraprastha, Bhima had been adamant that somewhere there would be a memorial for their father. But Yudhisthira knew that his father would never have wanted a statue or anything of the sort. That was when the gandharvas had brought the tree. Now the tree stood beside its reflecting pool in the most secluded inner part of the palace gardens. It was unmarked, with nothing physical to indicate that it was meant to be a memorial for a deceased king. But Yudhisthira and his brothers knew the meaning of the tree, and that was enough.

Yudhisthira closed his eyes, leaned back further against the trunk, and said, "I just resolved my first marital crisis today." He scratched his ear and said, "I don't know how you managed with two wives."

Now, if only Yudhisthira could resolve his larger familial crisis…

He winced at the sudden memory of Duryodhana storming out of Indraprastha on the same day that he had arrived. The tabloids had had a field day. Bhisma had been furious at both of his grandchildren. Yudhisthira had spent the past week with a hard, unpleasant tightening in his chest that refused to ease no matter how much he tried to distract himself.

"I'm not going to ask you what I should do," Yudhisthira told the tree. "Because I'm the king now. I have to figure out how to fix this myself. And I'm going to figure out how to fix things with Duryodhana. I will."

Yudhisthira sighed. Saying that he would fix things and doing the actual fixing were two different things indeed. No, he wasn't going to ask his deceased father what to do. But still, if an answer were to suddenly come down from on high, Yudhisthira thought, he would certainly be much obliged…

Suddenly, Yudhisthira's comm unit rang.

He pulled it out of his robes and clicked it open. "Yes?"

"There's a call for you from Hastinapura," Yudhisthira's new chief of staff replied. "It's His Majesty."

"Du… Duryodhana?!"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Yudhisthira's heart was racing. Duryodhana had refused to speak to him since the incident. Why was he calling Yudhisthira now? To apologize? To make things worse? Duryodhana had grown so unpredictable over the past year that Yudhisthira didn't know what to think anymore. But Yudhisthira swallowed nervously and then said, "Put him through."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Duryodhana listened for a moment as the comm unit hummed in silence. Then, from the other side of the planet, came Duryodhana's voice. "Is this a bad time?"

"No, not at all."

"Good, but it's a bad time for me, so I'll make this quick. I feel terrible about what happened between us." He sounded more bored an impatient than anything else, Yudhisthira thought, but wisely chose not to interrupt. "So I'm going to make it up to you," Duryodhana said. "Come back to Hastinapura. It doesn't have to be for long, just for a day or two. We'll play dice."

Yudhisthira was silent.

"What, didn't you hear me?" Duryodhana asked, not bothering to hide his impatience.

"You, uh…. Dice?"

"Yes, dice." A pause, and then, "Like Bharat did, remember? Great-great-great-granddaddy?"

Yudhisthira remembered. A game of dice between Bharat and the then-king of Madra had ended a decades-long war and established peace between the two planets. A public game of dice was the way that Kuru kings had ended feuds and established peaceful ties ever since. It was a long and noble kingly tradition.

It was also an invitation that Yudhisthira couldn't refuse. Not if he didn't want to offend Duryodhana any more than he already had, that is.

"I'll be there," Yudhisthira said. "As soon as you need me."

"Excellent! I'll send the details to your staff." Duryodhana cut of the call without another word. Yudhisthira turned off his comm, leaned back against his father's tree, and sighed again. If he had to play the role of the appeaser, then he had to play the role of the appeaser. Anything was better than letting Duryodhana drift even further away from him. Even a game of dice.

* * *

II.

As Yudhisthira had expected, however, his family protested. They protested during the days leading up to their departure from Indraprastha. They protested during the flight to Hastinapura. They even protested inside the hoverer that took them from the airport to the palace, all the way up until the last minute.

"He's not really interested in making up with you," Bhima pointed out as their hoverer bumped along. "And he knows that you're _terrible _with dice--"

"I can't be terrible with dice," Yudhisthira snapped, a bit testily. "It's not a skill, Bhima. It's just luck."

"Yes, but you have terrible luck," Sahadeva pointed out.

"So I'll lose a couple of valuable knick-knacks to Duryodhana," Yudhisthira said. "If that's what it takes to appease him, then that's what we'll do." Yudhisthira sat as regally as he could manage and stared down at his brothers and Draupadi. "This dice game is a royal tradition. A game of dice has been the method used by Kuru kings to end pointless feuds peacefully for generations."

Draupadi rolled her eyes. She was extraordinarily beautiful today, Yudhisthira thought. Before they had left the port in Hastinapura, Draupadi had changed into a stunning traditional sari. Normally Draupadi preferred to flaunt her modern fashion sense during her public appearances. But the gandharvas who had built Indraprastha had also gifted Draupadi with heavenly clothing fit, they said, for a true goddess. Draupadi was wearing one such sari right now. She did indeed look like a queen of heaven, Yudhisthira thought. But there was a tightness around her eyes and a slight frown on her lips that marred her otherwise unearthly beauty.

"Do you have a better suggestion for how to end this?" Yudhisthira asked his queen.

"Yes," Draupadi said. "On Panchala, we do have a better method for ending family feuds. If a family member makes a habit of acting insufferable, you cut off his head." She snapped her fingers. "Easy as that. Then you take everything that he owns." She glared at Yudhisthira darkly. "At least then your planet wouldn't be divided anymore."

Yudhisthira forced himself to chuckle, weakly. "You have an interesting sense of humor," he said.

Draupadi turned her head angrily away from him. "You think I'm joking?" Then she added poutily, "I have a chip in my ear because of you."

Yudhisthira sighed.

"Either way, this is bad," Nakula said. "You're giving in to Duryodhana's request for this stupid dice game without even putting up a fight. You're apologizing to him on his terms. That's not fair. He's the one who insulted _you _by leaving Indraprastha early, remember?"

Yudhisthira pointedly ignored Nakula, and turned toward Arjuna, who had been staring silently out of the hoverer's viewing window during the entire ride. "And you?" Yudhisthira asked. "Don't you have something to say, too?"

"What?" Arjuna turned toward Yudhisthira, and paused for a moment, his brain obviously struggling to catch up with the conversation. "Oh, yes," he finally said. "Gambling is a sin."

Yudhisthira settled back in his seat. "Well," he said. "You're all certainly being very supportive today."

The interior of the hoverer descended into an uncomfortable silence. Arjuna returned to staring out the window. Sahadeva picked at a loose thread coming off his sleeve, humming to himself tunelessly. Bhima and Nakula sat fuming silently. And then, finally, Yudhisthira felt Draupadi take his hands and squeeze them gently. "We are supporting you," she said. "We just think that you deserve better than this. You don't have to dance when Duryodhana tells you to dance."

"Thank you," Yudhisthira said. "I suppose."

* * *

III.

Hastinapura did not feel like home, Yudhisthira thought. It hadn't felt like home when he had first entered the city as a thirteen-year-old usurper prince, and it especially didn't feel like home today. This was Duryodhana's city now, Yudhisthira thought, as he watched his family enter Duryodhana's court and bow low, showing their respect. Duryodhana stepped forward and embraced Yudhisthira, whispering in his ear, "Thank you for coming."

"It's my pleasure," Yudhisthira said. He let Duryodhana lead him to his seat in the center of the hall, where a dice board had been arranged. Yudhisthira glanced over, and signaled for his brothers to take their seats. Arjuna was already busy talking to Ashwatthama , but Bhima managed to pull Arjuna's arm until he followed Nakula and Sahadeva to their seats along the side of the hall. Yudhisthira turned his head, taking quick and silent stock of the audience that Duryodhana had gathered. Duryodhana's father was there, and his mother, and his brothers, one hundred of them taking up the majority of the seating space in the hall, Karna seated among them. Yudhisthira saw Bhisma and Drona, sitting side by side. That was a surprise.

Then Yudhisthira saw his mother and Draupadi quietly sneaking out the back of the hall. Yudhisthira rolled his eyes, and quickly looked away. Gandhari and Dusshala had invited Yudhisthira's mother and Draupadi to their own private little gathering. Yudhisthira had expected Draupadi to at least stay by his side during the first few rounds of the dice game, and then take her leave after she had spent a few moments fulfilling her role as the queen showing public support to her husband's diplomatic gesture. But apparently the dice game had already become too boring for Draupadi to stand, even though it hadn't even begun yet. Ah, well. Yudhisthira didn't want to stop Draupadi from leaving and end up making a scene in front of everyone. For now, he had the dice game to concentrate on.

Yudhisthira turned his head and was startled to see Shakuni sitting not with Duryodhana's family on the side of the hall, but in Duryodhana's seat on the other side of the dice board. Duryodhana took another seat beside his uncle. "I hope you don't mind," Duryodhana said quickly, "but Shakuni will be rolling on my behalf." He rubbed his uncle's shoulder; Shakuni admirably did not recoil, although Yudhisthira could see the urge to do so in his eyes. "His fortune says that he has good luck today."

"I don't mind," Yudhisthira said, taking his seat. "It's an honor to play with your, Your Majesty."

"Likewise," Shakuni said, with enough sincerity to be believable.

Duryodhana beckoned, and Ashwatthama hurried to his side. "Our dice," Shakuni said, handing a pair of dice to Ashwatthama. "I trust that they are satisfactory?"

Ashwatthama rolled the dice in his hand, and nodded. "May they bring good fortune to you both," he said, handing the dice back to Shakuni. Then Duryodhana dismissed him with a wave of his hand, and Ashwatthama took his seat beside his father.

"I trust that you've chosen your first stake?" Shakuni said, handing one of the dice over to Yudhisthira.

"This," Yudhisthira said, and one cue one of his aides stepped forward and presented Duryodhana with a necklace of braided gold threads. "It was a gift from a gandharva."

Shakuni seemed impressed. "Nice," he said. Then he added, "Now roll."

Yudhisthira rolled his die, and Shakuni rolled his. The necks of everyone sitting along the side of the hall craned forward to see.

"I win," said Shakuni with a grin. He snatched the golden chain from Yudhisthira's aide, and tossed it to Duryodhana, who in turn handed the chain to one of his aides, who quickly scurried to the back of the hall. "Your loss," Shakuni said, "So make another stake."

Yudhisthira was prepared. "That painting by Gurnan," Yudhisthira said. He looked right at Duryodhana. "The one that you always liked--"

"You know me too well," Duryodhana said, with a laugh.

Yudhisthira laughed, too. This was good. They were getting along together, finally healing the rift between them. This was what he had hoped for. "I'll stake that," he said. Then he and Shakuni rolled their dice.

"I win again," Shakuni said. "Your next stake?"

"A sword," Yudhisthira said, as one of his aides stepped forward and presented Duryodhana with a holographic image, "handed down from my mother's grandfather."

Shakuni rolled his die. "I win again," he said.

Yudhisthira sighed. The sword was a minor price to pay in exchange for peace with Duryodhana, he reminded himself. "I'll stake--"

"You wanna come over here and rub Arjuna's head for good luck, or something?" Nakula suddenly said, loudly, from the side of the hall. "Because you look like you could use it."

For a moment, Yudhisthira was mortified, but then the crowd on both sides of the hall burst into laughter, and Yudhisthira joined them, laughing with relief. All right, still good. Nakula was just entertaining the crowd, whether he intended to or not. "I'm fine, Nakula," Yudhisthira said loudly. Nakula rolled his eyes in response, then glared at Sahadeva, who was laughing with the crowd.

When the crowd had quieted down, Yudhisthira continued. "_Varuna's Heart_," he said. "I'll stake the _Varuna's Heart._"

The crowd gasped. "Your yacht?!" Duryodhana said, in disbelief.

Yudhisthira shrugged. It was the largest item that he had planned on staking. And after four rounds with the dice, his obligation to the dice game would be finished. That was the tradition; any player who lost four rounds in a row could retire from the game without shame. Yudhisthira didn't mind. If he lost, he could always order the building of a new yacht. He was a king, after all.

"Most interesting," Shakuni said. Then he and Yudhisthira rolled their dice.

"I win," Shakuni said.

One of Yudhisthira's aides was unfolding the deed to the yacht for Duryodhana to sign. Yudhisthira clapped his hands together and said, "Well, that was certainly…. Interesting, wasn't it?" He bowed to Shakuni. "Perhaps I should have followed my brother's suggestion and rubbed Arjuna's head." The crowd laughed again at Yudhisthira's joke. Then Yudhisthira handed his die back to Shakuni and said, "It's been a pleasure, Your Majesty."

"Oh no," said Shakuni. Yudhisthira held out the die, but Shakuni refused to take it. "You're leaving already?"

"Today apparently isn't my lucky day," Yudhisthira said, ruefully.

"But it's only been four rounds!" Shakuni said, cheerfully. "Come, stay for a little longer. Duryodhana has some _excellent _treasures to stake for you, once you finally win a round."

Yudhisthira laughed. "I don't think--"

"Nobody can lose _all _of his rounds," Shakuni said. "Sit. Stay."

Yudhisthira slowly drew back his hand holding the die. He rolled the die against his palm and thought that yes, he really would like to see what treasures Duryodhana had planned to stake. All he had to do was stay until he won a round or two. And if he left now, he would run the risk of insulting Shakuni and Duryodhana. After all, Duryodhana hadn't even had the chance to showcase his own stakes in the game.

Yes, Yudhisthira thought to himself, he really should stay.

"All right," Yudhisthira said, still rolling the die against the palm of his hand. The motion felt soothing, calming. Even if he was losing, he _was _enjoying this game, just as he enjoyed all gambling despite himself. And besides, this game was fun! Duryodhana wasn't angry at Yudhisthira anymore. And the crowd was laughing at his jokes, even! Yudhisthira didn't want to leave, not just yet. He wanted to stay, so that he could let the game stretch out a little bit longer. It felt like old times again – back in Hastinapura, with Duryodhana, and the whole world at his feet.

"I'll stake…" Yudhisthira hesitated, suddenly unsure of what to stake. Since he had already staked his yacht, it would be bad form to stake anything less valuable from this point onward. Yudhisthira frowned, his brow furrowed in thought, then finally said, "I'll stake the worth of my crown jewels in gold."

Shakuni's eyes lit up. "A most excellent stake!"

Yudhisthira and Shakuni rolled their dice.

* * *

IV.

"Now this one," Gandhari said, pouring Draupadi another glass of wine, "my brother brought from Gandhara. It's from a little island in the north where--"

"Does His Majesty know that we're drinking this?" Draupadi asked, feeling pleasantly buzzed with the vague awareness that she was about to cross the line into officially tipsy.

"No. Why?"

"You're terrible," Kunti said, even as she held her glass out for her share.

"You're more like Uncle Shakuni than you think," Dusshala added, also holding out her glass.

"I'll disown you if you ever say that again," Gandhari sniffed, feigning – or perhaps only half-feigning – insult.

Between the four of them, they had already finished two bottles of wine. Draupadi sipped at Gandhari's latest offering, and sighed contentedly. If Yudhisthira wanted to spend the day wallowing in vice and debauchery, then Draupadi figured that she might as well do the same. There was more than one way to patch up broken familial relations, after all. The dice were one way. The wine was another.

"When this ridiculous dice game is over," Kunti said, "You two need to visit us in Indraprastha. I _mean _it," she said, sternly eyeing Gandhari. "No excuses."

"But Duryodhana said that your palace attacked him," Dusshala pointed out.

"Which is true, and likely because he deserved it," Gandhari said, gesturing emphatically with her wine glass. "Duryodhana is just that kind of person. A great king. But a terrible houseguest."

"Just that kind of person," Dusshala echoed, nodding somberly. Then she tapped her chin and said, "I would like to go to Indraprastha someday." She turned to Draupadi. "Is it true that you have books written by gandharvas in the national library?" Draupadi nodded, and Dusshala's eyes lit up. "Oh, that is _so _amazing!"

Draupadi shrugged. "I've seen those books, but I can't read them. So far nobody can."

"And when I get married," Dusshala went on, her cheeks flushed with alcohol, "I want it to be in Indraprastha, in the winter, so there can be snow, and ice sculptures. I know he'll love--"

" 'He'?" Draupadi asked, raising one eyebrow.

"No," Gandhari said. "No, you are _not _marrying him."

"Don't listen to her," Draupadi said, wagging her finger at Dusshala a bit drunkenly. "You should marry the man that you love." She gulped down more of her wine. "So who is this guy?"

"Do you know Jayadratha? From Sindhu? He was at your weddings."

"Oh… _Ew_," Draupadi said, making a face. Kunti and Gandhari burst out laughing.

Dusshala sighed and rolled her eyes. "Nobody understands him," she mumbled, poutily.

"So don't listen to what I say," Draupadi said, wagging her finger again. "You should marry the man that you love," she repeated.

Dusshala finally laughed. That was good, Draupadi thought. She could get used to this. Although Draupadi could never stand Duryodhana himself, she honestly rather liked Duryodhana's family. Dusshala would have been a perfect little sister. Draupadi had always secretly wanted a sister. And Gandhari was a woman who Draupadi felt she could admire for hours. Gandhari had a sharp mind and a sharp tongue and a strong bearing, exactly the type of queen that Draupadi hoped to someday be.

"Who's up for another bottle?" Gandhari asked, her hands poised to uncork.

Draupadi and Dusshala raised their glasses simultaneously. "I am!"

"Good," Gandhari said, already pouring into Draupadi's glass. "Now you two can settle an age-old question: Who can hold their liquor better, Kurus or Panchalans?" She then poured into Dusshala's glass. "The pride of our race is riding on your shoulders, dear."

"Or rather, your liver," Draupadi added.

Dusshala hiccupped, then saluted drunkenly. "I shall do my best!"

"That's my girl."

* * *

V.

It was around the twentieth or so loss that Arjuna began to suspect that something was wrong.

"My landscaping staff," Yudhisthira said. "All of them."

The dice rolled.

Arjuna looked around the hall slowly, trying not to make his alarm obvious. His eyes found Ashwatthama first, on the opposite side of the hall. Ashwatthama met Arjuna's eyes, then quickly looked away. But Arjuna could see the worry on his face. Arjuna tried to catch Drona's gaze, but Drona was busy staring at Yudhisthira, frowning intently, looking more and more upset by the minute. Arjuna shifted his gaze to the center of the hall. "The kitchen staff," Yudhisthira was saying. "All of them." Yudhisthira's gaze was focused intently on Shakuni. He was trembling slightly, his face deathly pale, not even noticing Arjuna's frantic attempts to catch his eyes. Arjuna turned his head to his left, and saw Sahadeva sitting calmly and clearly paying exactly zero attention to the game, whereas Nakula was leaning forward with his fists in his knees, his jaw clenched in anger.

"All of the gold in the streets of Indraprastha," Yudhisthira said. The dice rolled.

"_Stop the game,_" Nakula hissed under his breath, "_Stop the game!_" Nakula turned to Arjuna and whispered, "_Do something._"

Arjuna opened his mouth to reply, but Bhima's enormous hand was suddenly on his shoulder, squeezing gently. "Don't," Bhima whispered. "Only Yudhisthira can stop the game."

"But--"

"Don't embarrass us, Arjuna," Bhima said.

"I think we've already been plenty embarrassed," Nakula whispered back, angrily.

"Trust in your brother," Bhima responded.

Nakula fumed silently. Arjuna turned his attention back toward the center of the hall. "The art museum," Yudhisthira said. "And its entire collection. And the archives."

The dice rolled.

_Wait,_ Arjuna thought. Suddenly the stakes had changed.

"The library," Yudhisthira said.

_Wait, wait, wait!_

"Half of the fishing territory in the area south of the equator," Yudhisthira said. His voice sounded strangely choked, strangled.

_I'm not hearing this,_ Arjuna thought numbly. It was too surreal. He was watching a dream. He was incapable of believing that this was actually happening before his eyes. Moments ago, Yudhisthira had been laughing and joking with Duryodhana as he predictably lost a good-natured game of dice. And now, Yudhisthira was pale and trembling and clutching at the die in his palm in an odd way, his hand flexing and unflexing in arrhythmic convulsions, as he calmly gambled away the territory of his kingdom.

Something was wrong. Something terrible was happening, right in front of Arjuna's eyes. He couldn't believe it. And because he couldn't believe it, he couldn't act to stop it.

"I win again!" Shakuni crowed as the dice rolled.

Yudhisthira's mouth opened and closed without saying anything.

"Maybe you should quit," Duryodhana said, although there was nothing pitying or sympathetic in his voice.

"No," Yudhisthira croaked. "No!"

"Well, what more do you have to stake?"

Yudhisthira sat silently for what felt like an eternity, his gaze fixated on his own hand, still convulsively clutching and unclutching his die. "The Mayasabha," he finally said.

"Your palace?!" Duryodhana asked, no longer bothering to hide the greed in his voice.

"…Yes."

Arjuna looked helplessly at Bhima, who shook his head. Nakula pounded his fist into his thigh but said nothing. Sahadeva blinked slowly, and continued to stare at nothing in particular.

The dice rolled.

"I win," Shakuni said. He picked up his die and rolled it confidently across his hand. "Do you have anything else to stake?"

"My kingdom," Yudhisthira said, without even hesitating. He still would not look at anything but the die in his own hand. "Everything. Everything that I have. It's yours."

Shakuni laughed and clapped. "Did you hear that, Duryodhana? Kuru will be a united kingdom again!"

Arjuna glanced frantically around the hall. Old blind Dhritarashtra and Vidura sat together on the far side of the hall, Vidura's mouth hanging open in disbelief, Dhristarashtra's face displaying an odd mixture of emotions that Arjuna couldn't even read. Bhisma was staring at Duryodhana completely aghast, and Drona was frowning more deeply than Arjuna had ever seen him frown. Karna and Duryodhana's brothers were leaning forward in their seats, whispering eagerly. Arjuna tried, frantically, to catch Ashwatthama's eyes. _A priest has the authority to stop Duryodhana_, Arjuna thought frantically. _You stopped him at the weapons contest, didn't you? Ashwatthama, Ashwatthama, if you're my friend, then please….!_

Awatthama was looking to the right at his father, then to the left at the rest of Duryodhana's court, helplessly. But he would not look at Arjuna. And he was making no move to stop the game.

"Roll," Shakuni said.

Yudhisthira, his hand trembling, rolled his dice. And Shakuni rolled his.

The pair of dice scrambled across the dice board, bouncing and bumping until they rolled to a stop.

"Well," Shakuni said. "It looks like I win."

For a long moment, the hall was completely silent. Then Dhritarashtra asked, in his trembling old-man's voice, "The game is finished, then?"

"_No_," Yudhisthira said. He was staring down at the dice in front of him, not looking at anyone, but speaking to address everyone. "No, it is not finished."

"That's right," Shakuni said, his voice sinewy smooth with perfect agreement. "As long as you still have something to stake, you still have a chance to win back what you have lost. And you most certainly do still have possessions which you may stake." He leaned back in his chair as Duryodhana leaned forward hungrily. "As a king and eldest brother," Shakuni continued. "_They _are yours alone to do with as you please. To command, to take, or to give away."

Yudhisthira finally looked up at Shakuni. "Yes," he said.

Arjuna glanced around the hall nervously. Yes, what? What were the _they _that Shakuni was talking about? What did Yudhisthira still own that he could stake on the dice? Hadn't he already lost everything?!

And then Arjuna realized that Ashwatthama was finally looking at him. Arjuna met Ashwatthama's eyes, and saw only a flat, calm emptiness. Of course. Ashwatthama was supposed to always be in control of his emotions, wasn't he? But Arjuna knew from experience that his friend only got that eerily calm, empty look in his eyes when he was struggling to not be enormously upset about something.

Ashwatthama shook his head slowly, then looked away from Arjuna.

And then Arjuna finally realized what Shakuni was talking about.

_No,_ Arjuna thought. _No no no no no no!_ There it was again, that strange dream-feeling, the sensation that nothing that he was seeing or hearing could possibly be real. There was just no way. Not _his _brother, no, not ever. Yudhisthira was _good_. Arjuna had always known this deep in his bones, from back before he could even remember. Yudhisthira was his biggest brother, the one who was always looking out for him and Bhima and Nakula and Sahadeva – or at least trying to, even if he didn't always do a very good job of it. There was no way that Yudhisthira could possibly ever do anything so monstrous, so unspeakable, so—

"I stake Nakula," Yudhisthira said.

The watching crowd finally exploded in an uproar.

* * *

VI.

"_Silence_," Duryodhana shouted, "_SILENCE!_"

His voice cut through the crowd like a knife. Bhima shut his mouth and sat down slowly. Duryodhana's brothers still laughed quietly among themselves, but did not speak. Vidura had buried his head in his hands. Dhritarashtra's face was still unreadable. Bhisma looked as though he was ready for war, but he closed his mouth and took his seat.

"The laws of our kingdom are very clear on this," Duryodhana said, standing beside his uncle, his voice booming authoritatively throughout the hall. "An elder brother owns his younger siblings. He may offer his siblings as trade for peace, or as stakes in a sport of gambling." Duryodhana walked around the dice board and gently touched Yudhisthira on the shoulder. "Is not this true?"

Yudhisthira nodded, slowly. "Yes, this is true."

"Then we roll!" Shakuni called out cheerfully. "The stake is the prince named Nakula, who, if Yudhisthira loses, shall become Duryodhana's servant--"

"No!" Nakula shouted. He was up out of his seat, standing with his fists clenched, his face twisted with fury. "_No!_ I refuse to participate in this! You can't--"

"Nakula, be quiet," Yudhisthira said, calmly.

Nakula looked as though he had been slapped in the face. "You're not _serious_, are you?"

"I am serious. And I won't lose you."

"This is barbaric!" Nakula exploded. "My uncle Shalya will never forgive you for this! No Madra prince will ever become a lowly servant to the likes of Duryodhana!"

"But you are _not_ a Madra prince, you are a Kuru," Yudhisthira snapped, finally tearing his eyes away from his own hand long enough to meet Nakula's angry gaze. "And as such, you are subject to Kuru's laws, and you _will be _a stake in this game!"

"According to_ Kuru's_ laws," Nakula hissed, "human slavery is illegal."

"This isn't slavery, you're speaking of commoner law, and legal precedent is very clear in this matter: As a royal, you are bound by the royal traditions, and this is a royal tradition."

Nakula stared at Yudhisthira for a long time, his body trembling with rage. The watching crowd held their collective breath, silently. Finally, Nakula's face twisted into an expression of utter loathing. "I should have renounced you a long time ago," he snarled. He spat at Yudhisthira. "You can't be my brother. You're pathetic." Then, having said his piece, Nakula sat down. "Go on," he said. "Roll your dice. If you're determined to damn yourself to hell, then I'm not going to waste my time stopping you."

Yudhisthira turned back toward Shakuni without bothering to further acknowledge Nakula's protest. "Do you accept my stake?" he asked.

"Yes, most gratefully." Shakuni's voice was as slick and slithery as oil on water.

"Then roll."

The two of them rolled their dice. Duryodhana watched the dice roll and bounce across the board, then briefly risked a glance over toward Nakula. Sahadeva was clutching at Nakula's arm and trying to whisper something in his ear, but Nakula just shook his head.

The dice stopped.

"My win," Shakuni said.

Utter silence. Nobody said a word. Excellent, Duryodhana thought. He had expected to meet with more protests. Shakuni looked up at Duryodhana, expectantly. Duryodhana turned toward Yudhisthira's brothers and said, "Nakula, come here."

Nakula stood up out of his seat with exaggerated slowness, but did not step forward. "What, you want something?" he asked.

"I'm _ordering_ you to come here. You're a servant now."

"Fine by me," Nakula said, loudly, as he stomped angrily across the hall toward Duryodhana. "Brother to an asshole or servant to an asshole, it doesn't make much difference to me."

The crowd gasped.

"What did you call me?" Duryodhana snarled.

"I called you an obscenity," Nakula said, taking his place among the aides at the back of the hall. "What, did you not hear me? Would you like me to clean the wax out of your ears, _Your Majesty_?"

For a moment, Duryodhana seriously entertained the notion of wrapping his hands around the spoiled brat's neck and squeezing until it made a satisfying snap. In front of his father, in front of Bhisma, in front of Yudhisthira, in front of the whole world – he didn't care. But Duryodhana swallowed his anger, and forced himself to calm down. He had all the time in the world to slowly break Nakula, he reminded himself. He would deal with the brat later. Right now, he had to finish his business with Yudhisthira. "You are charming," Duryodhana told Nakula with a warm smile, "But right now I have no patience for a child's temper tantrum. If you have any other clever insults to give, then go ahead and get them out of your system now. Trust me when I say that you will face your punishment later."

Nakula fumed silently, but said nothing.

"Would you like to make another stake?" Shakuni was already asking Yudhisthira. "If you make another stake, you have the chance to win your brother back."

Yudhisthira stared down at his hand for a long moment. Then he said, "I will stake Sahadeva."

The crowd did not say a word. Nobody bothered to protest. They already understood the inevitability of what would happen next, Duryodhana realized. Good.

"Excellent," Shakuni said. They rolled their dice. "My win."

Duryodhana finally sat back down in his seat next to Shakuni. "Oh, Nakula!" he called over his shoulder.

"_What?_"

"Go and fetch your brother. Bring him to me."

Nakula calmly walked back across the hall. "Come on," he said, taking Sahadeva's hand and pulling him up out of his seat. Sahadeva's eyes were wide and frightened, but he followed Nakula over toward Duryodhana.

"My shoulders have grown stiff," Duryodhana said, cracking his neck for emphasis. "Sahadeva, I want you to massage them."

Sahadeva looked repulsed at the suggestion. Nakula, however, cracked his knuckles eagerly and said, "_I'll_ massage your shoulders."

"No," Duryodhana said. "I ordered Sahadeva to do it." He smiled up at Sahadeva. "There's a rumor among the servants here that you have _very _talented hands." Duryodhana's smile widened. "Skills honed by years of promiscuity," he said. "_All _of the low-ranking servants in this palace like to gossip about _your_ skilled hands. And not just the ladies, either."

Sahadeva stared at Duryodhana with his mouth hanging open.

"Well, hurry up," Duryodhana snapped. "Don't just stand there like an idiot."

"But--"

"Just do it, Sahadeva," Nakula said, wearily. "We can figure out how to poison his food _later_."

Sahadeva wordlessly placed his hands on Duryodhana's shoulders and began to rub, half-heartedly. Duryodhana gave no sign that he was enjoying this, but instead dismissed Nakula with a contemptuous wave of his hand. On the far side of the hall, Bhisma lowered his head in his hands and began to weep quietly.

"Well?" Duryodhana asked Yudhisthira, who would not meet his eyes. "Would you look at this. Doesn't he look happy to finally be working for a real king?" Duryodhana asked, jerking his thumb up at Sahadeva. "Of course, if you really would like a chance to win them their freedom back--"

"I stake Arjuna," Yudhisthira said.

This caused a reaction. Duryodhana's brothers began laughing and cheering. Bhima stood up out of his seat and shouted something, but Duryodhana couldn't hear him over the sound of his family's laughter. Sahadeva's hands momentarily tightened around Duryodhana's shoulders.

"Roll," Duryodhana told Shakuni quickly, "Roll!"

Shakuni and Yudhisthira rolled.

"Well," said Shakuni with a smirk, as the dice rolled to a stop, "Would you look at that."

Chaos in the hall. Duryodhana motioned for his guards, who swarmed toward the side of the hall where Bhima and Arjuna now stood alone. Bhima stepped in front of Arjuna, his face dark with anger, his massive fists swinging back to pound the guards. Duryodhana wondered, with some interest, if there would be a fight.

But instead, Arjuna grabbed at Bhima's arm and shouted. "Stop, stop!"

Bhima reluctantly lowered his fist. But he turned to Arjuna and said, "You can't go with them."

"But I will. It's the law." Arjuna managed to give his brother an unconvincing smile. "It's okay. No king will mistreat me." He was doing a poor job of hiding the fear in his voice, though.

Duryodhana relished the look on Bhima's face as Arjuna quietly stepped forward and allowed the guards to escort him to the back of the hall, where he took his place beside Nakula. Duryodhana's brothers continued to laugh and cheer at the sight of Arjuna standing with the other low-ranking servants. Duryodhana was surprised to see that unlike Nakula and Bhima, Arjuna did not look particularly angry. In fact, he seemed afraid if anything. Afraid of Duryodhana? No, Duryodhana realized, when he saw where Arjuna's eyes were looking. Arjuna was afraid for Yudhisthira. Afraid, and sad, and hurt.

This day couldn't have gotten better, Duryodhana thought.

Except for one thing—

"_Yudhisthira!_" Bhima roared, his thunderous voice shaking the hall into silence. Ah, yes, Duryodhana thought. There it was. The sweetest icing on the cake.

"If you weren't my own brother," Bhima continued, his body trembling with rage, "I would rip your weak, cowardly heart out of your chest right this moment! How could you?! How could you _do _this to us?!" Then Bhima pointed an accusatory finger at Duryodhana. "And _YOU_--!"

"I stake Bhima," Yudhisthira said quietly, cutting off Bhima in mid-sentence.

_Now_, Duryodhana thought, the look on Bhima's face was truly priceless. "You can't," Bhima said, in what amounted to a quiet voice by Bhima standards.

But Yudhisthira did not answer him anymore. "Roll," Yudhisthira told Shakuni. And they rolled.

The dice bounced, and flipped, and then finally rolled to a stop.

Shakuni laughed and clapped his hands. Duryodhana's brothers exploded into a mixture of cheers and gleeful catcalls. Sahadeva's hands clutched convulsively at Duryodhana's shoulders. Bhima stood alone on his side of the hall, stunned and speechless.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Duryodhana asked, turning his head toward Bhima. "Hurry up and get to the back of the hall. My servants do not stand _before_ me unless I give them permission."

For a moment, Bhima's face was so red with rage that Duryodhana seriously thought that Bhima was about to march right over to him and snap his neck. But then, slowly, Bhima turned and began to march toward the back of the hall. So far, so good, Duryodhana thought. Bhima hadn't quite been pushed over the edge. Not yet. As long as Bhima still had his wits about him, he at least was bound to obey the laws of Kuru royalty.

"Go with him," Duryodhana told Sahadeva, already bored with his shoulder massage. Sahadeva stepped away from Duryodhana and followed Bhima to the back of the hall.

Duryodhana stood up out of his seat and turned toward the back of the hall. "Well, look at you all!" he said cheerfully. "All together like one big happy family!" His brothers laughed and roared in approval. Nakula glared murderously at Duryodhana. Sahadeva held his brother's arm and stared sadly at the floor, while Arjuna kept his sad eyes fixed on Yudhisthira, and Bhima stood and loomed protectively over all of them, perfectly copying Nakula's murderous glare.

"But," Duryodhana said, "You fools still don't _look_ like proper servants." He walked across the hall, right up to Sahadeva, and grabbed his startled cousin by the shoulder. "Just _look_ at this!" he laughed, bunching Sahadeva's shirt in his fist and purposefully ignoring the fact that Arjuna was currently restraining Nakula from murdering him. "These fine clothes aren't fit for a lowly servant," he sneered. "It's an _insult_ for my _servants_ to be dressed as royalty." Duryodhana let go of Sahadeva and pushed him back toward his brothers. Sahadeva was still wide-eyed and stupid with surprise at his sudden violation and release. Duryodhana turned toward his cheering brothers and asked, "Well?"

"Take them off!" Durmada shouted, obligingly. And suddenly one hundred voices joined him in a thundering chorus. "_Take them off! Take them off! Take them off!_ _Take them off! Take them off!_"

"You heard your masters," Duryodhana said, turning back to his new servants. "Take off your clothes. You have no right to be wearing such luxuries anymore." Then he paused, and finally added magnanimously, "Keep your underwear, though. I have no wish to see any of your filthy bodies exposed any more than necessary."

"_Take them off! TAKE THEM OFF! TAKE THEM OFF! TAKE THEM OFF! TAKE THEM OFF!"_ The crowd was roaring and stomping their feet and clapping their hands to the rhythm. Nakula said something, no doubt something nasty, but Duryodhana couldn't hear him over the roar of the crowd. Finally Sahadeva cast down his eyes and began unbuttoning his shirt, his hands trembling as he did so. Nakula stared at his brother in disbelief for a moment, then set his jaw and began unbuckling his belt, taking care to make each and every gesture in the process as sharp and as angry as he possibly could. A moment later, Bhima and Arjuna began stripping as well.

Duryodhana's brothers went wild, laughing and applauding. Jackets, shirts, and pants fell to the ground around Yudhisthira's brothers. Finally they were huddling together, mostly naked and shivering. Duryodhana ate them up eagerly with his eyes. Arjuna's strong arms, Bhima's barrel-like chest, Nakula and Sahadeva's intricate matching devakin markings curling around their necks and backs. Bhima wrapped his arms around the other three and pulled them close to him, managing to mostly shield them with his bulk. But it was too late, the damage was done. Duryodhana could see the naked humiliation written all over their faces. Humiliation, and shame.

It was _beautiful_.

"Do you see what you've done?!" Bhima suddenly shouted at Yudhisthira. The crowd of Duryodhana's brothers was still laughing and applauding, causing so much uproar that even Bhima had to struggle to be heard over the din. Nevertheless, he still shouted at Yudhisthira. "I told you this would happen! _I told you!_" He cast his wild, angry eyes over the entire watching crowd: Duryodhana's cheering brothers, his father and uncle shaking their heads in horror, Bhisma still weeping not with despair but with anger, and Drona looking ready to kill. "_I told all of you!_" Bhima roared. "Duryodhana is evil! He destroyed us, and he will destroy all of you! If you--"

"_SILENCE_," Duryodhana roared, matching Bhima decibel for decibel.

Bhima fell silent. So, too, did the crowd.

And slowly, Duryodhana turned back toward Yudhisthira, who was still sitting at the dice board, his face blank and stunned.

"You know," Duryodhana said quietly. "You can still save them, if you wish." He walked back over to the dice board, and took his seat beside his uncle again. "You can still make another stake. You still have a chance to win them back."

Yudhisthira seemed to look at Duryodhana without really seeing him. "Oh," he said. But then he fell silent again.

Shakuni rolled his die around in his hand, eagerly. "So what are you going to do, Your Majesty?" Shakuni asked.

Yudhisthira nodded his head slowly. "Yes," he said. "I will stake myself."

"You're _mad_!" Bhima shouted from the back of the hall. "You idiot – you complete, utter, sniveling idiot – for the love of God, _snap out of it_!"

But Yudhisthira ignored his brother's roaring. "We roll," he said, finally lifting his eyes to meet Shakuni's gaze.

Shakuni laughed as he rolled his die. And a moment later, he was clapping and laughing. "It's over, it's over!" he crowed, as Yudhisthira stared wide-eyed at the dice.

Duryodhana's brothers began cheering and clapping again. "What should we ask him to do for us first?" Dusshasana shouted over the din.

"Get down on his hands and knees and scrub the floor!" Durmada shouted.

"Clean out the trash dumpsters!" Vikata added. This suggestion was met with a torrent of applause.

"Clip my toenails and massage my bunions!" Sama added. This suggestion was also met with approving thunderous applause and more laughter. Then Sama continued, "And clean the manure out of the tiger's cage!" The laughing crowd seemed to love this suggestion even more.

"Stand up," Shakuni ordered Yudhisthira. Yudhisthira stood up slowly, his face still stunned, disbelieving. "Take off your clothes," Shakuni sneered, "and join your brothers at the back of the hall until we decide what to do with you."

Yudhisthira began to unbutton his shirt with his slick, sweaty fingers. But Duryodhana suddenly said, "Wait."

Yudhisthira froze. Shakuni shot Duryodhana a curious, intrigued look.

"Sit down," Duryodhana ordered Yudhisthira. Yudhisthira sat back down at the dice board. "We're not finished yet," Duryodhana said.

"But I have nothing more to stake," Yudhisthira said. He sounded remarkably calm, given the circumstances. He was still clearly in some stage of denial.

"Yes, you do," Duryodhana did. His brothers began to quiet down and watch intently as they realized that even more entertaining humiliation was about to be served to them. "You still have one last thing that you may stake," Duryodhana said, struggling to hide the eagerness in his voice. If he didn't watch himself, he was about to start _drooling _with anticipation for what was coming next. But Duryodhana forced himself to maintain his composure. "You still have one last chance," he said, "to win back your freedom and the freedom of your brothers." Duryodhana gestured for Yudhisthira to take his die again. "I'll tell you what. I'll even bend the rules and make a direct stake this time. Yours against mine. I'll stake you and all of your brothers – if you will stake this last thing for me."

Yudhisthira licked his lips. "What do you suggest that I stake?" he asked, his voice hoarse, hushed.

"Your wife," Duryodhana said. "Draupadi."

Duryodhana's brothers burst into applause again. "_Draupadi!_" They chanted. "_Draupadi! Draupadi! Draupadi! Draupadi!_" Shakuni shot Duryodhana a surprised look, but Duryodhana just nodded at Shakuni, and Shakuni clutched his die and nodded in return.

Yudhisthira nodded his head, too. "Very well," he said. "Against Duryodhana's promise of myself and my brother's freedom, I will stake my wife Drau--"

"_This stops here_." Drona's voice sliced through the roar of the crowd and brought the entire hall to instant silence.

Duryodhana turned his head and regarded the old Panchalan priest, who was standing up out of his seat, staring Duryodhana straight in the eye. "For Yudhisthira to stake his wife after having lost himself first is against even _your _backwards, anachronistic laws. _Your Majesty._"

Finally a challenge, Duryodhana thought. He had wondered how long the dice game would drag on before he would have to shout down an old man. He wasn't surprised that Drona was the first to question the game. The crazy old Panchalan had always been as unpredictable and as dangerous as a badly-tuned firearm, after all. But he was also the weakest possible challenger to Duryodhana's authority. "What do you know of Kuru's laws, old man?" Duryodhana spat.

"More than Kuru's king, apparently."

"Is that why you always seem so intent on breaking them?"

Drona, unfortunately, smiled at this. "There is a difference between you and I," he said. "I have honor, at the very least. You have only shown everyone here today that their king has the black heart of an asura."

"Shut up, old man," Duryodhana said with a snarl. "It is only by my grace and goodwill that I allow you to stay beneath my roof in the first place."

"Correction," Drona countered. "It is only by my grace and goodwill that I choose to stay in the court of a tyrant." He shrugged. "I would rather--"

"It is only by my grace and goodwill," Duryodhana snarled, "that _your son_ is allowed to live in freedom on Kuru rather than as a prisoner of Panchala's High Council."

At this, Drona froze.

_I've got you now,_ Duryodhana thought, unable to hide his triumphant smile. Duryodhana still didn't have the first clue what Ashwatthama's Gift was, but he knew that the Panchalan High Council wanted Ashwatthama locked away for good, and that was all that Duryodhana needed to know for the moment.

Drona narrowed his eyes at Duryodhana, searching Duryodhana's face, trying to discern if Duryodhana's threat was serious. It was. Drona's eyes widened.

"Your objection is noted, old man," Duryodhana said. "But ignored. Yudhisthira is Draupadi's master; if he chooses to stake her, then the stake is fair." Duryodhana smiled at Drona. "Do you have anything else to say?"

Drona turned his head slightly to look at his son. Ashwatthama looked horrified, on the verge of tears, his face drained of color, the strange blue mark on his forehead darkened so much that it looked like a bloody scar, contrasting sharply to his pale skin. Ashwatthama shook his head and mouthed the word "No," although Duryodhana wasn't sure whether this was a plea for his father to answer _No _to Duryodhana's question and sit down, or whether it was a plea for his father to not give in to Duryodhana's threats.

But Drona tore his eyes away from Ashwatthama and said through gritted teeth, "No, Your Majesty." He shook his head. "If this is the foolish choice that Yudhisthira will make, then so be it." He sat back down again.

Because he couldn't help himself, Duryodhana risked a quick glance over at Arjuna, just to relish – for a brief moment – the look that he imagined would be on Arjuna's face. Arjuna did not disappoint. He was staring at Drona and Ashwatthama with a perfect blend of horror, anger, betrayal, and deep hurt written all over his face. Neither Drona nor his son were looking Arjuna. They were both busily looking away.

Duryodhana turned back to Yudhishtira and clapped his hands briskly. "Now that _that _little distraction is taken care of," he said cheerfully, "are we ready to roll the dice?"

Yudhisthira shook the die in his hand. "Yes," he said. "We roll."

He and Shakuni rolled their dice. The dice crashed into the dice board, bounced, flipped, and finally rolled to a stop.

* * *

VII.

Dusshala handed the last wine bottle to Draupadi. "Last glass?" she asked.

"Please tell me that there's more."

"I'm ordering more brought to us as we speak," Gandhari said, her fingers deftly flying across the modified keys of her comm unit. "And no vintage younger than twenty years," he said into the comm, before closing it with a click. She turned her blindfolded eyes toward Draupadi and said, "I admit that you have impressed me, young lady. I thought that no woman could hold her liquor as well as my Dusshala."

"We're just getting started," Draupadi said with a laugh. She was officially tipsy now, but not terribly so. So far, the only effects of the alcohol that Draupadi had felt were that own jokes suddenly seemed astoundingly clever to her ears.

Gandhari seemed about to say something else, but she suddenly turned toward the door and mumbled under her breath, "That was fast…" And then, on cue, there was a knock at the door.

Kunti pulled open the door. "Yes, Sanjaya?" And then, without waiting for Sanjaya's answer, she asked sharply, "What is the matter?"

Draupadi and Dusshala stood up quickly. Draupadi craned her neck to be able to see Sanjaya's face, to see just what exactly had alarmed Kunti so. Sanjaya was deathly pale, his brow sweaty, deep bags under his eyes. His shoulders were hunched, as if weighed down by a great burden. His face looked like death.

Draupadi felt herself sobering up instantly.

"I have been sent to fetch Queen Draupadi," Sanjaya said, bowing low. "H-His Majesty Duryodhana requests her presence in the gambling hall," Sanjaya continued, his voice hitching.

Draupadi's first thought was that something must have gone wrong with the gambling match: an insult had been thrown, harsh words had been exchanged, and things had escalated until Bhima had finally ripped someone's head off. She could imagine the scenario all too well. But she forced herself to stay calm. "What business does His Majesty have with me?" Draupadi asked.

Sanjaya looked up at Draupadi's face, then quickly averted his eyes. "His Majesty Yudhisthira staked you in the dice game and lost," Sanjaya said, gasping out the words in a rush, as if he couldn't even bear to say them. "His Majesty Duryodhana has requested that you report to the gambling hall and fulfill your duties as his maid."

Draupadi dropped her wine glass. It spilled all over the floor and her feet, but she didn't even notice. "What?"

"His Majesty Duryodhana has requested that you report to the gambling hall and fulfill your duties as his maid," Sanjaya repeated, grimacing at the taste of the words in his mouth.

"That isn't funny, Sanjaya," Gandhari said. "If my husband is using you for an ill-advised prank, then--"

"I would not joke about this!" Sanjaya shouted, his voice cracking. Now there were tears rolling down his eyes. "Yudhisthira lost everything! His kingdom, his brothers, himself, his wife – everything!"

For a moment, all four women watched Sanjaya sobbing in silent horror. Then Dusshala said in a small voice, "That can't be. My brother would never…"

"Sanjaya," Draupadi finally said, as the horror of everything that Sanjaya had just said began to sink in. "Sanjaya, I need you to deliver a message to Duryodhana for me," she said, calmly. "Tell him that I will not enter the gambling hall until he can answer one question: Did Yudhisthira lose me before, or after, he lost himself?"

Sanjaya nodded tearfully. "I will ask him, Your Majesty."

"Thank you, Sanjaya," Draupadi said, as kindly as she could. She couldn't stand to see the poor old man weeping for another moment.

Sanjaya left, and Kunti closed the door behind him. For several long moments, nobody said a word. Then, slowly, Draupadi sat down in her chair and said, "I would like another glass of wine, please." She glanced at the floor and said, "I'll pay for the carpet."

Still, nobody said anything. Finally Dusshala sat down beside Draupadi and said, "This can't be happening."

"I think it is."

"Duryodhana would never –- _Yudhisthira_ would never--!"

"Just stop," Draupadi said.

Kunti buried her head in her hands. Gandhari wrapped her arms around Kunti's shoulders and held her without saying a word.

They were frozen like that, in silence, waiting, for what seemed like hours, but couldn't have been more than a few moments. Draupadi's mind was racing. She needed to know exactly what had just happened in the dice game. She needed to know so that she could figure out what to _do _about it. She needed to talk to Yudhisthira. She needed to punch Duryodhana in the face. She needed to call her secretary to look up the ancient Kuru laws recorded in the libraries of Hastinapura. She needed to call her brother and her father on Panchala and tell them to ready the fleet. Even if she had lost her kingdom, she was still a queen, and she could still fight to get it back.

There was finally a knock at the door.

Draupadi stood up and threw open the door. "Sanja--"

"No," said Dusshasana, "not anymore." He sighed. "Good help is so hard to find these days." The five faceless brothers that he had brought with him laughed at this line. "Come here," Dusshasana said, reaching out to grab Draupadi's arm and pull her bodily into the hallway. "You're going to--"

"Don't TOUCH me!" Draupadi snarled, swiping her free fist toward Dusshasana's face. But one of Dusshasana's brothers grabbed her fist and twisted her arm behind her back, immobilizing her. Dusshasana grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her forward. She stumbled forward, further into the hallway, and suddenly there were hands all over her, pushing her down the hallway and pulling at her hair and—

"Stop it!" Dusshala's voice cried out from somewhere behind Draupadi. "Dusshasana, stop this!"

There was the unmistakable sound of a slap. And then some other brother, a voice that Draupadi didn't recognize, started yelling. Escalating voices, the sound of an argument. But Draupadi could no longer hear their words. She was being pushed and pulled down the palace hallway, and Dusshasana still had her by her hair. She tried to fight back, but the other brothers were grabbing at her arms and laughing at her.

And then, suddenly, there was no more hallway. Draupadi was pushed and dragged into the gambling hall. Dushasana let go of her hair, but another brother suddenly pushed her, and she stumbled, fell, and went sprawling onto the floor. Her beautiful sari, the one that Nakula had helped her choose that morning, the one with the pale yellow colors that looked so nice against her dark skin, ripped as she tripped over its hem when she fell. Her torn sari parted, obligingly exposing her naked legs to the view of everyone in the hall.

The sound of roaring laughter pounded against Draupadi's ears. She scrambled to stand up as fast as she could, nearly tripping herself again/ But finally, somehow, she managed to right herself. Draupadi flipped her now-tangled and much-abused hair over her shoulders and glanced around the hall, as regally as she could, gathering up the last shreds of her dignity and cloaking her heart with them. The side of the hall where her husbands should have been sitting was empty. That was the first thing that Draupadi saw. Then she saw Duryodhana, standing in the center of the hall next to the dice board, devouring her greedily with his eyes. Behind Duryodhana, at the back of the hall, standing among the other servants and aides, were Draupadi's husbands – stripped of their clothes, huddled close together, and looking angry enough to kill Duryodhana within moments. Well, four of them looked angry, that was. Yudhisthira was standing slightly apart from the others, staring at nothing, his face frozen in a strange expression of shock. Draupadi tore her eyes away from her husbands before she could let herself feel sorry for them. She needed to hold on to her anger, she realized. It was the only way that she was going to survive this. Draupadi finally turned her head to the other side of the hall, to the crowd watching her. Outnumbering everyone else were Duryodhana's brothers, laughing and hooting and jeering at her, causing a roaring uproar. Then there were Bhisma and Drona and Ashwatthama, who kept their heads down and their eyes turned away from Draupadi. At the sight of the three of them, Draupadi felt a flash of emotion, a mixture of shock, anger, disgust, and contempt. And then finally Draupadi saw the old blind man that was Duryodhana's father, weeping uselessly as he listened to the jeerings of his own sons, while Vidura held him silently and whispered into his ear.

"Well, well," Duryodhana said, leering at Draupadi. "You finally showed up. _Late_, I may add. That's no way for a maid to behave."

Draupadi didn't feel like giving Duryodhana the dignity of a reply. Instead, she spat at him.

The crowd laughed. Duryodhana feigned insult. "Is that any way to treat your master?"

"You are _not_ my master," Draupadi snarled.

"Yes, I am. Your husband lost you in a dice game. If this displeases you, you should direct your anger at him."

"You still haven't answered my question," Draupadi countered, marching straight down the center of the hall toward Duryodhana, making damn sure that everybody watching knew that she felt no fear. "Who did Yudhisthira stake first, himself, or me?"

Duryodhana's face darkened. "It is no longer your place to ask such questions."

"Who did Yudhisthira stake first?" Draupadi asked, again.

"I'll have you hold your tongue," Duryodhana snapped, reaching for her – to strike or to grab, Draupadi wasn't sure.

But Draupadi stepped out of Duryodhana's reach and turned toward the laughing crowd instead. "Will none of you answer my question?" she asked, shouting to be heard over the catcalls of Duryodhana's brothers. "Yudhisthira staked himself first, didn't he? _Didn't he_?" She turned back to Duryodhana. "No man can stake his wife after he has already lost himself. I don't belong to you."

"Your interpretation of the rules is incorrect," Duryodhana said, as condescendingly as he possibly could.

"_Damn the rules_!" Draupadi suddenly shouted, loud enough to shock the crowd into a temporary silence. "And damn your prehistoric dice game! A _person_ is not a possession! A person cannot be won or lost in a game!" She was furious now, shouting, and she didn't care. "I do not and have NEVER belonged to Yudhisthira! I belong to _nobody_! And I most certainly _do not belong to you!_"

"Ha!" Duryodhana laughed. "What a sharp tongue you have."

"I have a sharp sword, too, if you'd like to taste it."

"You don't own a sword anymore," Duryodhana said. "You don't own anything, not even your own freedom. You're just a serving girl. Of course," he added, thoughtfully, "if you'd rather be a queen than a lowly slave for the rest of your life…" Duryodhana slapped at his inner thigh invitingly. "Come, sit on my lap," he said. "I will take you as my queen."

Draupadi felt the bile rising in her throat. She opened her mouth to give her reply, but suddenly Bhima's voice boomed from the back of the hall. "I swear to all the Gods, Duryodhana, I will BREAK that thigh of yours before I die!"

Duryodhana laughed. "She is no longer yours to protect," Duryodhana said with a dismissive sneer, not even bothering to turn around to address Bhima directly.

"She was never _worth_ protecting," Karna suddenly called out from the crowd. He stepped forward from among Duryodhana's brothers and pointed one accusatory finger at Draupadi. "A woman who would sleep with five men has no honor worth protecting. She's a _whore. _She never was and never will be anything more than a common whore."

"Shut your mouth, weaponsmith," Draupadi growled, threateningly.

But Duryodhana laughed again. "That's right," he agreed, "a whore! A woman without honor." He leered at Draupadi again. "Certainly no whore deserves to wear such fine clothes as these."

Draupadi took another step away from Duryodhana. "Don't you dare," she said.

"Why not?" Duryodhana licked his lips. "What are you trying to protect? Your dignity? Your honor?" He laughed. "You have none. You belong to me now. And I would like to see my newest servant nude!"

Duryodhana's brother burst into laughter and clapping again. "_Strip! Strip! Strip! Strip! Strip!_" they chanted.

"_Strip the whore!_"

"_It's what she deserves!_"

"_It's what she wants!_"

Dusshasana suddenly loomed at Draupadi's shoulder, and grabbed at her sari.

Acting without thought, acting on instinct, Draupadi lashed out with her fists. She landed a blow squarely on Dushasana's nose. He stumbled backward, blood spurting. And then she turned and ran. Her only instinct was to flee, to escape. She could worry about other things – her kingdom, her husbands, her revenge against Duryodhana – later. At the moment, her only thought was to protect her body, to escape the laughter pounding in her ears, to never have to feel Duryodhana's eyes or hands roaming her flesh—

Draupadi suddenly slipped, her feet flying out from under her, and went crashing to the ground.

_What? _She was numb, dazed. She could feel cold, slick ice beneath her body. _What? What?! _

Why was there ice on the floor of the gambling hall?! And why hadn't she noticed such an insane, incredulous thing before?!

Suddenly Dusshasana was grabbing her by her shoulders and lifting her up. She tried to struggle, tried to kick, but it was no good. He whirled her around and suddenly she was facing Duryodhana again, Duryodhana and his hundred brothers, all of them laughing at her, laughing and jeering and clapping, as Dusshasana reached around her back, grabbed the front of her sari, and ripped.

Draupadi screamed.

The crowd roared in approval as the front of Draupadi's sari was torn apart. Fortunately for Draupadi, however, her chest was still covered; the sari wrapped around her body in layers, and Dusshasana had only managed to tear through the outermost layer of silk that was covering Draupadi's body.

Dusshasana seemed instantly enraged by his failed attempt to expose Draupaid's breasts. Draupadi tried to stumble away from him, but Dusshasana grabbed her arm again, and pulled her back toward him. Draupadi realized that she was crying. She hated herself for showing them her fear, she hated herself for giving them all the satisfaction of her tears – but she couldn't stop crying.

Dusshasana let go of her arm and grabbed the end of her sari, pulling at it, preparing to unravel the entire garment right off her body. Draupadi closed her eyes and began weeping. "Oh Lord, oh Lord," she sobbed, her voice instantly drowned out by the roaring crowd. "Please, Lord Shiva – Please, Lord Vishnu – Please, Lord Rama – if you can hear me, if you can hear your daughter, then please _please--"_

Draupadi finally felt the delicate folds of her sari unraveling. Dusshasana was tearing her clothes right off her body.

Draupadi's arms instinctively flew up to her chest in a feeble attempt to cover her breasts. But then, suddenly, she felt that her sari was still there.

Draupadi risked opening her eyes. Dusshasana was staring at her, wide-eyed, as he pulled and pulled and pulled, and a never-ending river of silk poured into his hands.

Neither Duryodhana nor the jeering crowd seemed to have realized yet what was happening. "Hurry _up_, Dushasana!" Duryodhana snapped. "Let's see what this whore really looks like!"

Dushasana reached for Draupadi again, grabbed at the silk covering her shoulder, and tore.

Draupadi closed her eyes. "_Hare Rama_," she sang, the words coming unbidden to her mouth, welling up inside of her, calm and soothing. Suddenly she wasn't afraid anymore. "_Hare Rama_," she sang again. "_Hare Rama, Hare Hare._"

Dusshasana ripped and tore at Draupadi's sari. But no matter how much he tore, no matter how much he pulled, there was still more silk beneath, covering Draupadi's body.

The crowd began to quiet down.

"_Rama Rama_," Draupadi sang, _"Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Hare Hare_!"

Dusshana tore at her clothes again. And still Draupadi was not naked.

Now the crowd was silent, watching in awe.

Dusshasana tore and pulled and tore and pulled some more. And Draupadi threw her arms up and sang with joy. "_Hare Vishnu, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare_!" She was transfixed, possessed. The devakin markings on her back glowed with a holy light. She felt only a deep sense of peace, and joy, and basked in the knowledge that she was loved and would not be harmed.

Dusshasana roared with rage and tried to grab at Draupadi and tear off her sari, her hair, anything. But it wouldn't work. And Draupadi still laughed and sang, her arms held up to the heavens.

Finally Duryodhana stepped forward, glared at Dusshasana, and said, "That's enough."

Dushasana let go of the fold of silk that he had been pulling, feeding into a pile of clothing that had been steadily growing beside him for the past several minutes. "_Witch_," he snarled at Draupadi.

Draupadi lowered her arms and opened her eyes. The mysterious feeling of euphoria was slowly draining, but in its wake she was left feeling sharp-eyed, clear-minded, and alert. She turned to Dusshasana and asked calmly, "What did you just call me?"

Dusshasana opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly, Bhima was roaring from the back of the hall again. "_DU-SHA-SA-NAAAA!"_

The entire hall rumbled as if caught in an earthquake. Dusshasana cowered, his face suddenly filled with fear. Draupadi stood her ground and privately relished the look on Dusshasana's face. "In front of the Gods and with all here as my witness," Bhima rumbled, stepping forward out of the line of servants, "I swear that I will tear out your heart with my own bare hands and drink your blood before you die!" Bhima turned, sweeping his hands across the crowd of Duryodhana's brothers. His eyes were red, flaming. "All of you," he roared, "all of you!" This was Bhima pushed over the edge, Draupadi realized, allowing herself to feel a tiny bit of awe. This was the deva side of Bhima – the side of him born not of human civilization but of the raw howling rage of Vayu – and the devas were here now, inside of Bhima, inside of the gambling hall, all around them, listening to Bhima's vow. The gods were here to witness Bhima's vow. "I swear," Bhima said, glaring directly at Duryodhana, who had finally turned around to face him, "I swear, Duryodhana, I will _kill you and each and every one of your brothers_. With my hands alone, I will take each of your lives in return for this insult."

The hall was utterly silent. Draupadi reached town and effortlessly tore off the trailing end of her sari with her bare hands. Then, no longer attached to the river of silk flowing around Dusshasana's feet, her sari torn and her hair still disheveled, Draupadi walked slowly across the hall, past Duryodhana and Dusshasana, and directly up to Bhima. He stood, mostly naked, fuming with rage, a trembling thundercloud of a man who looked ready to charge forward and tear Duryodhana apart at that very moment. Draupadi reached up and gently touched his shoulder. He seemed to calm down, a bit, then looked down at her with sorrowful eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Don't be." She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on his cheek. Then Draupadi turned to face the silent crowd, now watching her in horror. "You all heard that, didn't you?" she asked. "The devas are here with us, and they heard Bhima's vow, too." She turned toward Duryodhana. "For the injustices that you have wrought here today, you will die. You and_ all_ of your brothers." She turned toward the watching audience. "The Kuru dynasty will be destroyed. It is no less than any of you deserve. You who would sit silently and weep like useless children while your daughter-in-law is humiliated in front of you," she said, glaring at Bhisma, "you who had once vowed to protect me and have since betrayed once, twice, and thrice over," she added, casting her fiery gaze at Drona, "you who would--"

"Enough," Dhristrashtra finally said.

Draupadi turned to face him. The trembling old blind man had stood up out of his seat and was walking slowly across the hall, lead by Vidura, his hands outstretched toward Draupadi. "Enough, enough!" he sobbed. "I beg of you, daughter of Lord Shiva, I beg of you! Take back this curse which you and your husband have delivered. Spare my sons. They are my _children. _They--"

"They do not deserve your love," Draupadi said, "and you do not deserve my mercy. You sat and did _nothing_ while Duryodhana committed cruel sins against your own kin, right beneath your very nose!"

"You are right," Dhritarashtra said, stopping a few feet in front of Draupadi, Vidura beside him. "I do not deserve your mercy, nor your forgiveness. But I can at least right some of the wrong that has been done here today." He took a deep breath, then bowed low in front of Draupadi. "Oh beloved woman whom the gods themselves protect," he said, "ask of me one thing, anything, and I will grant it."

"You can't!" Duryodhana suddenly shouted. "Father, what are you doing?!"

"I am trying to undo what you have done," Dhritarashtra answered, his voice still trembling.

"You can't! I forbid it! Are you listening to me?! _I'm _the king and--"

"Even a king must obey his father," Vidura suddenly snapped.

Duryodhana shut his mouth.

"Ask anything of me," Dhritarashtra repeated, to Draupadi.

Draupadi nodded. "I wish for my freedom," she said. "I will be neither a servant nor a slave to anyone, least of all to Duryodhana."

"It is done." Dhritarashtra raised his head to gaze at her with his sightless eyes. "Ask of me another boon," he said.

"I wish for Yudhisthira's freedom," Draupadi answered.

"Done." Dhritarashtra ignored Duryodhana's shout of protest. "Ask of me another boon."

"I wish for Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva to be free as well."

"Done, and done." Dhritarashtra stepped toward her. "Ask of me another boon."

But Draupadi shook her head. "No," she answered, "not any more. I could never ask for more than three boons. My husbands and I, now that we are free, will fight for whatever else we need. Even," she added with a cruel smile, "if it means the destruction of Kuru."

Dhritarashtra's face fell. He turned to Duryodhana. "My son, please," he begged, "give your cousins back their kingdom! Are you deaf to Draupadi's words?! They will destroy us all if you do not--"

"No!" shouted Duryodhana, slamming his fists down on the dice board that had caused so much grief that day. "No, Father! Our kingdom has been reunited, and I will not let you – not your or anyone – tear it apart again!"

"Then so be it," Draupadi said. She looked up at Bhima, he looked down at her, and together, they began to walk toward the exit of the hall. "Come," Draupadi said to the rest of her husbands. "We're leaving. There is nothing left for us here."

Draupadi and Bhima walked side-by-side down the hall, past Dhritarashtra and Dusshasana and Duryodhana, past the dice board, toward the exit. Draupadi turned her head slightly and saw Arjuna following behind her, leading a still shell-shocked Yudhisthira by the arm, with Nakula and Sahadeva, hand-in-hand, following a step behind. They were a ridiculous-looking procession: five men in their underwear, and Draupadi wearing a torn sari. But nobody dared to laugh at them. Their every step now echoed with the promise of deva-sanctioned death.

"Wait," Bhisma said, finally standing up out of his seat. It was the first word that the useless old man had uttered during the entire dice match. "Where will you go? You have no kingdom left to return to."

Draupadi paused in mid-step. Her husbands stopped, too. She turned to face Bhisma. "To Panchala," she said. "We have family there that will not betray us."

Draupadi noticed, with some satisfaction, that Bhisma's eyes widened at the mention of Panchala. Drona's eyes did too. They understood what that meant. Panchala had a mighty fleet that could crush Kuru in an instant, and a king who would not take kindly to the news that his daughter had been stripped and humiliated in front of Kuru royalty. Not just Panchala, but Madra too. They could count on military support from Nakula's uncle.

Kuru was finished.

Draupadi turned her head slightly, and saw Shakuni frantically whispering in Duryodhana's ear. She laughed inwardly. If the wiley old Gandharan king thought that he had come up with a way to save Duryodhana, then—

"Yudhisthira," Duryodhana suddenly called out, stepping away from his uncle.

Yudhisthira slowly turned his head toward the sound of Duryodhana's voice.

"I have a proposal for you," Duryodhana said, obviously struggling to keep his voice even and calm. Draupadi couldn't tell whether Duryodhana was trying to hide fear, eagerness, or both. "If you want your kingdom back – the whole kingdom, the united kingdom – then we'll give you one last chance to win it."

Yudhisthira pulled away from Arjuna's grip and turned fully toward Duryodhana. "I'm listening," he said, evenly.

"One last wager," Duryodhana said, as Shakuni tossed a pair of dice invitingly in his hand. "The stakes will be simple. Whichever of us wins the toss will win the throne. Whichever of us loses the toss will leave – accompanied by a court of his choice – leave this planet branded as an exile, for thirteen years. When he returns, the kingdom will be his." Duryodhana held out his hands in a gesture of supplication. "This is not a wager that you can lose," he said, soothingly. "Either you win the kingdom now, or you win the kingdom in thirteen years."

"And if I win this wager and you leave in exile," Yudhisthira replied, "this means that in thirteen years, I hand the kingdom over to you?"

"Yes, yes, but!" Duryodhana said quickly. "This exile has rules." He was talking quickly now, trying to explain everything in a rush, laying it all out before anybody could talk Yudhisthira out of listening. "The exile must travel exclusively in the Yama Quadrant for twelve years. Contact with any family members or previous acquaintances is forbidden, save for those who accompany the exile. The exile may travel in any direction to any planet that he wishes, but must never stay on one planet for more than six months – six universal standard months – at a time. If the exile breaks any of these rules, the thirteen years starts anew at that very moment. And – in the thirteenth year – the exile must stay on a single planet for exactly twelve months, in hiding. If I – you – whichever of us can find the exile during the thirteenth year, the period of exile begins again, for another thirteen years. See?" Duryodhana jabbed his finger at Yudhisthira. "Even if you win and I leave in exile, you still have a chance to defend your throne. If you can find me during the thirteenth year, and again during the thirteenth year… And the same for you. If you end up in exile, I can search for you, over and over again… This is only fair. Do you understand?"

"That's not fair," Nakula said. "That's _insane_."

"It is fair," Duryodhana insisted, urgently. "Yudhisthira and I both have a claim to this throne, but I will not – I will _never_ – divide the kingdom again." He pointed to the dice in Shakuni's hands. "This is the only fair way to settle the matter, once and for all. The dice are random. They're tools of chance. They--"

"Do you seriously expect us to believe that those dice are_ random_?!" Nakula interrupted, incredulously. "After what we've seen here today?"

Duryodhana laughed. "How could I cheat with a pair of dice?!" he asked. Then he pointed to Ashwatthama, who visibly recoiled from Duryodhana's finger. "My own priest inspected these dice! Would you accuse Ashwatthama of cheating?"

Nakula closed his mouth and said nothing.

"Come now, come now," Shakuni said, tossing the dice cheerfully in his hand. "Yudhisthira, we're offering you your kingdom back. All you have to do is agree to play a little game." Shakuni grinned at them, a grin like a snake's grin. "It will be a fun little game, won't it? A fun little game that lasts for thirteen years."

"Don't listen to him," Draupadi said quickly, stepping around Bhima to grab Yudhisthira's arm. "This is not a fun little game," she hissed. "Do you know what the Yama Quadrant is like?! It's a wasteland! There are planets there that we haven't been able to contact for hundreds of years. There are rakshasas there. There are asuras, hiding in the dark spaces between planets. There are--"

"Draupadi, you sound like a certain paranoid Panchalan priest that I know," Duryodhana said, lightly. "The Yama Quadrant may be far away, but it is far from a wasteland. There are many planets there, great planets, just like Kuru and Panchala."

Draupadi ignored him. "If you end up in the Yama Quadrant," she told Yudhisthira somberly, "you will die. We all will. To be sent to the Yama Quadrant is a death sentence."

"But," Yudhisthira said, slowly, "we can get the kingdom back." He turned to look her straight in the eye. "Isn't that what you want?"

"Forget the game!" Draupadi said. "We don't need Duryodhana's stupid game! We have can have the Panchalan and the Madran fleet on our side with a single comm call! We can--"

"No," Yudhisthira said, shaking his head slowly. "No, Draupadi. No. I will not shed blood for the sake of a throne." He gently, but firmly, removed her hand from his arm. "But I will not let Duryodhana keep Kuru's throne, not after what he did to you today." Yudhisthira stepped away from Draupadi, toward Duryodhana. "You are right," he told Duryodhana. "We will let the dice decide which of us wins the throne, and which of us will have to leave Kuru."

"You coward!" Draupadi hissed. She looked to her left, at Bhima, then to her right, at Arjuna and the twins. None of them would meet her eyes. Draupadi realized, with a sinking feeling, that they were all thinking the same thing that Yudhisthira was thinking. They were thinking that they would willingly walk into Duryodhana's trap, if it meant possibly taking away his throne without a fight. They were thinking that they would be able to survive the Yama Quadrant if they lost, these soft and naïve princes who had never endured true survival circumstances before, let alone traveled outside the limited area of space occupied by Kuru, Panchala and Madra. Even Bhima, even _Bhima_, who moments before had sworn a bloody vengeance against Duryodhana and all of his brothers, was staying quiet.

Draupadi balled up her fists, pressed them against her forehead, and screamed inwardly.

Yudhisthira, the great cowardly idiot, sat down in his seat at the dice board. "I will do this," he said.

"Excellent!" Duryodhana said, as he took his seat on the opposite side of the board, and Shakuni sat down beside him. "First, should either of us end up in exile, we must choose our courts."

"Before the dice roll?"

"Yes. Who will you take?"

"My brothers and Draupadi," Yudhisthira answered, quickly.

Shakuni raised one eyebrow at this. "Do any of you know how to pilot a ship?"

Yudhisthira furrowed his brow. "And a pilot," he said. "I reserve the right to choose the pilot at a later time," he added, haughtily, finally returning a bit to his normal regal attitude.

Duryodhana nodded. "I will take Dusshasana," he said. "And Yuyutsu," he added, although this immediately caused rumblings among his crowd of watching brothers. "My other brothers will stay on Kuru," Duryodhana said quickly. "They have done nothing to deserve the dangers of exile."

"You will take only two with you?" Yudhisthira asked.

Karna suddenly stepped forward, out of the crowd. "I will go," he said.

Duryodhana was visibly startled by this. He turned toward Karna slowly. "But… Your sons…"

"They'll have their mother." He put his hand on his chest. "I swear, Your Majesty, wherever you go, I will be by your side."

Duryodhana nodded slowly. "Thank you," he said, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

" I will go too," Ashwatthama suddenly said, stepping up beside Karna. "Please, Your Majesty. Let me come with you."

Duryodhana shook his head. "The High Council has forbidden you to--"

"So _override_ the High Council. You do it all the time anyway." Ashwatthama pleaded with Duryodhana. "Let me go with you. Exile is the least that I deserve."

Duryodhana glanced quickly at Drona, who was still sitting in his seat and glaring murderously in Duryodhana's general direction, but who was making no effort to stop his son. "Very well," Duryodhana said. Then he turned back toward Yudhisthira. "Well. I've declared my court, and you've declared yours. Do you understand the rest of the rules?"

"Yes," Yudhisthira said, reaching for the die that Shakuni offered him. "I understand."

Shakuni handed the other die to Duryodhana, who was finally, apparently, about to roll on his own behalf. "Then we roll," he said.

The two of them drew back their fists, and released their dice.

* * *

To be continued.


	23. Interlude: Ashwatthama

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

INTERLUDE: ASHWATTHAMA

* * *

They didn't speak to each other as they walked through the palace silently. They didn't speak to each other as Drona opened the door to their apartment suite. They didn't speak to each other as Drona flipped on the lights and paused to read the note that Kripi had left scrawled by their media console. Ashwatthama slipped into his room, shrugged off his robes, and lit the candles in front of his statue of Shiva, removing the leftovers from the sacrifice of dumplings that he had left that morning.

There was no speaking at all, until Drona showed up in the doorway of Ashwatthama's room and said brusquely, "I commed your mother. She'll be back in half an hour. Pack your things. We're leaving."

Ashwatthama paused in the midst of wiping off the plate that had, as of that morning, held three dumplings. Now there was nothing left but crumbs. "Leaving?"

"We're leaving Kuru."

"We can't," Ashwatthama said evenly. "The High Council on every planet wants to arrest us. Duryodhana's protection is--"

"_Duryodhana is a devil_," Ashwatthama's father spat, suddenly full of venom. "And no son of mine will serve a king such as him."

Ashwatthama looked his father straight in the eye and said, "No more of a devil than Drupada ever was."

He regretted the words as soon as he said them. His father looked as if he had been slapped. "That's not true," he said. "Drupada has committed sins – and neither you nor I are anyone to judge him for them – but he would _never_ have betrayed and humiliated his own family like--"

"No," Ashwatthama said, "that would be _our_ sin, wouldn't it?"

Drona said nothing. Ashwatthama put down his plate, turned back toward his father, and said, "I'm sorry. That was… I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." Drona turned and walked back into the common room. Ashwatthama followed close behind. Drona sank down onto a couch, then hunched over, like a bent old man, and buried his face in his hands. "She was Drupada's daughter!" he wept, his voice muffled from behind his hands, "and Arjuna, and I did nothing--!"

Ashwatthama wanted to feel something as he watched his father sitting in front of him, broken and weeping. But he was just too numb inside. The events of the day had drained him completely: mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Ashwatthama thought, wryly, that he had finally discovered the secret to keeping his emotions under control. All he had to do was continue the rest of his life this way, perpetually too exhausted to even _feel _the slightest emotion.

But Ashwatthama still sat down on the couch beside his father and wrapped his arms around his father's shoulders. "At least you tried," Ashwatthama whispered, quietly. "At least you _tried_. I didn't even…" His voice hitched, and he was unable to finish his sentence. Ah, there is was. All of that emotion that moments ago he had thought himself too exhausted to feel, suddenly welling up to the surface.

Ashwatthama's father wiped his eyes with his hands, seemed to get himself back under control, then took his arms and wrapped them around Ashwatthama in return. "I can at least protect you," Drona said, his voice a fierce breathy hiss. He sounded like a drowning man, trying desperately to clutch at one last idea to save his life. "I promised you, didn't I? I'm going to protect _you _until--"

"—Until it's time to use my Gift. I know," Ashwatthama said, with a wry smile, pulling out of his father's arms.

"Which is why we have to leave!" Drona insisted. "We can't stay near Duryodhana. That man is _poison_."

Ashwatthama suddenly stood up off the couch. He was shaking his head. "No," he said. "I told you. I can't leave. I--"

"We'll go into hiding again. You know how easy it is. Nobody will ever find us. We--"

"It's not that." Ashwatthama looked down at his father, still sitting on the couch, looking more feeble and old than Ashwatthama had ever remembered him looking before. Ashwatthama felt his heart twist in his chest, but he still took a deep breath, and forced himself to say what he had to say next, because it needed to be said, even if it hurt his father. "I'm an adult now, Father," Ashwatthama said. "And it's time that you started respecting the choices that I make. And I choose to stay with Duryodhana."

Drona looked up at Ashwatthama, regarding him with unreadable eyes. "Why?" he finally asked.

"Why what?"

"Why would you choose to devote yourself to Duryodhana?"

Ashwatthama sat back down on the couch, albeit a bit of a distance from his father this time. "Do you remember what you used to teach me?" Ashwatthama asked, quietly. "About people, and how everyone sins... You once told me that even if I met bad people in my life, I was supposed to love them. If they tried to do bad things, or to hurt me or other people, then I could hurt them back. But I must still love them. Because there is no one – not a single soul – who cannot be guided to the light. A lot of people will turn away from the light of the devas, and a lot of the people that I try to help won't listen to me. But I can't ever stop trying. That was what you taught me, so that was the path that I chose. I bring the light of the devas to everyone, even those who will turn away from it, and I must never abandon them, because without me, they won't _ever_ find the light again." Ashwatthama looked down at his hands. "I know that you were saying those things because that's how you felt about a lot of people, like Drupada. I know that you stayed with him because you saw the light of the devas in him, even when nobody else could see it. Even though _I _still can't see it." Ashwatthama took a deep, shuddering breath. "And that's why I choose to stay with Duryodhana," he said. "I do not think… that he is a very good person. But I have seen him do good before." Ashwatthama paused, silently remembering the weapons contest so many years ago, when Duryodhana had stopped the crowd from rioting and crowned Karna a king. But of course, Ashwatthama couldn't very well bring up that particular example in front of his father. "I know that Duryodhana has done great evil," Ashwatthama said quickly, "and worse today than I had ever thought him capable of. But I agreed to serve him and his family, and serve them I will. There are good people in this family. Good people that love Duryodhana, and who trusted me with the task of watching over his soul. I can't abandon them, and I can't abandon _him_. Not now. Not ever."

Ashwatthama finished saying his piece and then sat quietly, waiting for his father to say something in response.

Nothing. Silence.

Ashwatthama turned his head to look at his father. He felt his stomach clench when he saw that tears were rolling down his father's cheeks again. "Father?" he asked, alarmed.

"It's nothing," Drona said quickly, wiping a tear from his eye. "I'm just a sentimental old fool. And even I can't tell whether these tears are because of the fact that right now I am prouder than I have ever been of you, or because of the fact that I may have raised the greatest idiot the universe has ever known, and can do nothing anymore but sit on a couch and weep about it."

"Forgiveness and mercy are the greatest virtues," Ashwatthama said. "You taught me that."

Drona wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. He swore softly in a language that Ashwatthama didn't even recognize. That was a new one. Then Drona finally laughed and said, "Why do you _always_ make me cry?"

" 'Always'? I think this is the first time."

"Not true. I cried when you took your first steps." He sniffled. "Your mother caught it on her recorder. I burned that holo a week later and told her that there had been an accident with the puja."

Ashwatthama laughed. He had nothing to really be laughing about, at the moment, but it felt good to laugh anyway. Then he suddenly stopped laughing, when he realized that his father was regarding him somberly.

"This is truly the path that you choose?" Drona asked.

Ashwatthama nodded.

Drona sighed. "You are stubborn," he said, "and stupid," he added, ticking off on his fingers, "and short-sighted, and pigheaded, and clearly more concerned about the welfare of others than that of yourself." He held out his five splayed fingers at Ashwatthama. "Clearly you get that from m… your mother."

"I thought I got it from you."

"I told you," Drona said, finally smiling, "Right now, I couldn't be prouder."

"Thank you," Ashwatthama said, his voice husky. He sniffled, afraid that he was suddenly about to burst into his own tears. He stood up off the couch, hoping to grab a handkerchief before he could embarrass himself with running snot, when suddenly, the apartment's buzzer rang.

Ashwatthama ran to the door, because he already knew who would be there. He threw open the door and then froze, suddenly unsure of what to say.

Fortunately, Arjuna spoke first. "May I come in?" he asked. Since the end of the dice game, he had at least managed to put on some clothes. But he looked exhausted, with dark rings under his eyes, and his skin pale, drained of color.

"Yes. Always. Please come in," Ashwatthama said. Arjuna stepped inside. Ashwatthama risked a quick glance around the hallway outside – no guards or aides present, since Arjuna had come alone – and then closed the door.

"I can't stay long," Arjuna said. His voice was low and breathy. He was half-whispering, as if he were hiding and afraid that someone would overhear him. "We're being escorted to the port in an hour, and I… Uh…" He scratched at his head for a moment, then looked helplessly around the apartment, at Drona, at Ashwatthama, at the clock and the pictures on the walls, at the blank media console, and then finally back at Drona, his eyes helpless and desperate and lost.

Drona immediately took charge of the situation. "Come here," he said. It was clearly and order. "Sit down," he ordered again, motioning Arjuna toward the couch. "Ashwatthama, could you…?"

"I'll be in the library," Ashwatthama said, quickly. He was out of the apartment before Arjuna could protest. Ashwatthama didn't really want to go to the library. He didn't want to go anywhere in the palace where he might risk running into one of Duryodhana's ubiquitous family members, at least not at the moment. But he knew that his father and Arjuna needed to be alone, and that was important.

Ashwatthama wasn't sure why Arjuna had showed up on their doorstep. Was it because he always came running to Drona whenever something went wrong? Was it because he was angry about what had happened at the dice game and need to confront Drona about it? Was he desperate for a last-minute bit of wisdom or training that might help him survive the horrors of the Yama Quadrant?

Or had he come merely to say goodbye?

Ashwatthama found the palace library utterly deserted. Even at such a late hour, the library was usually filled with people; but on this night, of all nights, Ashwatthama understood why nobody was around. So he found himself a table in a secluded corner, sat down with a book, folded his hands in his lap, and tried to think of nothing.

* * *

II.

Ashwatthama's comm rang some time later. He picked it up and heard his father's voice: "Arjuna wants to see you."

"I'll be right there."

Ashwatthama arrived back at the apartment, his arms loaded with data discs. "These are for you," he said, setting down the pile of discs on a table for Arjuna to look through.

Arjuna thumbed through the discs, frowning. "What…?"

"They're dictionaries. Of languages known to be used in the Yama Quadrant." Ashwatthama looked down at the pile, then shook his head sadly. "There's not many. And… I searched the library, but I couldn't find a decent map or star chart." He looked up at Arjuna. "The Yama Quadrant is expanding so rapidly that it's nearly impossible to keep a current chart, anyway. There are planets there that used to be relatively close to us, but they've drifted so far away that we've lost contact for hundreds of years." He folded his arms over his chest. "And there are rakshasas out there, too. All of the expanding dark matter breaks down the boundaries between our universe and theirs. They can cross over freely and--"

"I know," Arjuna said quickly. "I know." He took a deep breath. "Believe me, I know."

"I know you know." Ashwatthama sat down on the couch where his father had been moments before. His father was already gone from the room, Ashwatthama noticed. That left him and Arjuna alone. "Your family needs you to protect them, though. You have to be the one to do it. None of the rest of them can."

"Do you think that I can't do it?" Arjuna asked, sitting down beside Ashwatthama.

"No, that's not what--"

"And what about you?" Arjuna continued. "Do you think that you can really, I don't know, save Duryodhana's soul, or whatever it is you said you were going to do?"

"That's oversimplifying it," Ashwatthama said. "And did Father tell you that?"

"If you stay with Duryodhana," Arjuna said, quietly, "then I'm scared for you."

"Believe me, you are not half as scared for me as I am scared for you."

"Thank you… I guess."

Then Arjuna reached for Ashwatthama's hand. Ashwatthama took Arjuna's hand in his own, and the two sat silently, not saying a word to each other, not even looking at each other, for a long time. They didn't need to say anything to each other. Their hands were clasped together, and that was enough.

Finally Ashwatthama risked glancing at a clock and said, "You've been here for far longer than an hour."

"Nobody's coming to look for me, though."

"Did you tell anybody that you would be _here_?"

Arjuna didn't answer.

Ashwatthama sighed and said, "They need you. You should be with your family right now."

"But you're my family too," Arjuna said.

Ashwatthama wiped at his eyes and whispered, "Thank you."

Arjuna finally let go of Ashwatthama's hand, stood up, and gathered the data discs in his arms. "Did you steal these from the library?" he suddenly asked.

"That depends on your definition of 'steal'." Ashwatthama winked at Arjuna. "I'm the royal priest. Technically, I _own _the palace library."

"I thought that the High Council owned--"

"Arjuna, you just had an entire kingdom stolen from you, I hardly think that this is the time for you to be complaining about--"

"We're lifting off at nine hundreds hours the day after tomorrow," Arjuna suddenly said. "Will you be there? I, uh… I don't want to have to say goodbye right now. It wouldn't feel right."

"I'll be there," Ashwatthama said. "And you don't _ever _have to say goodbye to me." He tried his best to smile at Arjuna. "You're coming back in thirteen years, aren't you?"

Arjuna returned Ashwatthama's smile, although Ashwatthama could see that Arjuna's smile was every bit as fake and as strained as his own. "You'll be here waiting for me, won't you?"

Ashwatthama blinked at Arjuna. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Arjuna was silent for a moment, then he said, "If you're staying here, then you have to promise to protect Kuru for me. Everyone, and every place. Even Duryodhana." Arjuna's stormcloud-colored eyes were the most intense and focused that Ashwatthama had ever seen them. "Please, promise me. I was supposed to be the warrior who protects Kuru, but if I can't be, then… Then it has to be you. Nobody else has the light that you do," he finished, in a small voice.

Ashwatthama nodded slowly. "I promise," he said. He placed his hand over his chest and said solemnly, "I promise that in the next thirteen years, I will do my best to ensure that Duryodhana becomes less of an unmitigated asshole."

Finally Arjuna laughed, and this time, his smile was genuine. "I love you," he said.

"I love you too. Now get out of here. Somebody's got to be looking for you by now, right?" Ashwatthama jerked his thumb toward the door. "Hurry up. Remember what happened the _last_ time that I tried to hide you from the palace guards?"

"Has it been long enough that we can look back at that now and laugh?"

"I think so, yes."

"Then I'm out of here," Arjuna said, already halfway out the door, his arms still loaded down with Ashwatthama's discs. "I'll see you later."

Ashwatthama didn't say anything as Arjuna left. Once Arjuna was gone and the door closed and locked behind him, though, Ashwatthama turned around and said to the empty apartment, "You can stop pretending to not be eavesdropping anymore."

Drona emerged from wherever he had been lurking and glanced sadly at the closed-and-locked door. "He's not ready for this," Drona said. "He hasn't grown up at all. I had hoped that marrying Draupadi would help him mature a little, but…" Drona trailed off, then tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Was it my fault?" he asked, although Ashwatthama had the distinct impression that his father wasn't actually talking to _him_. "I let him rely on me too much, didn't I?"

Ashwatthama shook his head. "Arjuna will be fine. The devas won't abandon him. He will be protected." He turned toward his father. "Arjuna defeated _Lord Indra himself_, remember?"

Drona turned away from Ashwatthama. "Lord Indra is a deva. He has honor. But Arjuna and his family are going to travel to places where there are things without honor that will want to destroy them simply because they share the blood of the devas."

Drona then left the room without saying another word. Ashwatthama sat back down the couch and tried not to think of the darkness in the Yama Quadrant, tried not to think of Arjuna walking right into that darkness armed only with his bow, and tried not to think of the city of Indraprastha falling under Duryodhana's rule. Ashwatthama had never even been to Indraprastha, but somehow, the thought of Duryodhana sitting on the throne in the palace made of maya sent chills down Ashwatthama's spine.

_It's all right_, he told himself. _I promised Arjuna, and I promised Duryodhana when I first took my oath to him, and I promised my father. I won't let the darkness come to Kuru. I will protect this planet. I can be the light._

Ashwatthama spent the rest of the night sitting on that couch, convincing himself that it was true.

* * *

To be continued.


	24. Chapter 12: Departure

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

CHAPTER TWELVE: DEPARTURE

* * *

It was Subhadra who called Balarama's comm at ten in the morning. "I don't know what you're doing right now," she said, "but you should come home and turn on the media console, _now._"

"Who died?" Balarama sighed, trying to finish the milking of Spider with one hand as he held his comm in the other.

"Nobody's dead yet, but--"

" 'Yet'?"

"Just come home quickly. And tell Krishna to come too."

Balarama clicked off his comm, tried to stuff it back into his coverall pocket and slip back on his milking glove at the same time, managed to accomplish both tasks, allowed himself to feel impressed with himself for a moment, then quickly finished up his business with Spider. Spider regarded Balarama curiously as he finished up the milking, slipped off his coverall, and pulled out his comm again.

Balarama pressed his brother's number, but was not surprised to receive a message that Krishna's comm was out of service. Balarama strode out of the barn and looked around for his brother, squinting against the late morning sun. He found Krishna sitting on a fence, concentrating on whatever handheld game he had managed to borrow from Subhadra that morning. Krishna's thumbs flew across the keypad as he frowned in concentration.

"We're going back to the house," Balarama said, grabbing at Krishna's arm and unceremoniously pulling his brother off the fence.

"Is it lunch time already?" Krishna asked eagerly.

"No. But something's wrong."

Balarama marched Krishna back to the house where his mother and Subhadra were waiting for them. Or rather, Subhadra was waiting. Their mother was glued to the media console.

"This is bad," Subhadra said, as she led her brothers to the console. "This is very, very bad." She sat down beside her mother and said, "Duryodhana is our king now."

Balarama blinked at her, unsure if he had heard right. "Come again?"

"I said, Duryodhana is the king now."

"What? _What?!_"

"I said--"

"But what happened to Yudhisthira?!" There were few people who dared to refer to a king by his name only, but Balarama and his sister were among them.

"Just watch," Balarama's mother suddenly said.

So Balarama sat down beside her, on the opposite side of Subhadra, and watched the media console. After a few moments, he felt an angry knot clenching in his stomach. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe any of it. He couldn't believe that one Kuru king could be so deceitful and treacherous, or that another Kuru king could be so weak-willed and greedy.

Balarama's comm unit rang, and he pulled it out of his pants and flipped it open. He wasn't surprised when he saw the identity of his caller flashing across its small screen. It was a call from Kritavarma. Balarama stood up off the couch, brought the comm to his ear, and was about to answer when there was a loud crash from the kitchen. Krishna stumbled back into Balarama's field of view, rubbing his head and cursing.

"What did you break?" Balarama's mother asked as Balarama slipped his still-ringing comm back into his pocket. Kritavarma could wait. Balarama had the strange, almost queasy sensation that something more important was about to happen in his own home.

"It wasn't me, it was the ladder!" Krishna said in an incoherent rush, pointing toward the kitchen. "The, uh, the ladder from the crawlspace! It just came flying down and--"

"What are you doing trying to get into the crawlspace at a time like this?" Balarama's mother asked, her patience obviously wearing thin.

"You stored my luggage up there and--"

"Krishna, _no,_" Subhadra said, without letting him finish.

"Fine, then I'll use Dad's good set of luggage," Krishna said cheerfully, misunderstanding her, perhaps on purpose. "He certainly doesn't need it anymore."

Krishna moved to step away from the kitchen, but Balarama blocked his path. "What exactly are you playing at, here?" Balarama asked.

Krishna blinked at him. "Nothing. This isn't a game." He tried to step around Balarama, but was blocked again. "Move it_, _will you? This is a matter of life and death!"

"Of course it is. Absolutely. Now you're going to tell me where exactly you plan on running off to so that you can get yourself killed, and then maybe I'll let you go. Maybe."

Krishna backed up a step. He looked to Subhadra, then looked to his mother. Finding no help on either of their faces, Krishna finally sighed and said, "I have to go with them."

" 'Them'?"

"The king and his family."

"Duryodh--"

"No, the _real_ king," Krishna snapped, then suddenly looked abashed. "Sorry." He tried to step around Balarama again. "I know that you won't understand, so there's no point in me explaining right now. But I have to go with them."

"If you're trying to convince me to let you exile yourself into space for thirteen years," Balarama said, "you're doing a terrible job of it."

"Krishna," his mother said, "Explain to me this: Not why you want to go with His Majesty, but _how _do you intend to leave with His Majesty? You are not currently an employee of the royals. And even if you became one, the console said that His Majesty isn't allowed to take any--"

"But they _need_ me," Krishna said. "Even if they don't know it yet." Suddenly he stepped back into the living room and pointed at the console screen. "See? Look!"

It was King Yudhisthira on the console screen. He was speaking to a reporter while a small crowd of bodyguards and aides pressed close to them, and what sounded like a much larger crowd swelled around them. The reporter asked something that Balarama didn't catch, but the king shook his head and said, "No, no. No, we won't be." There were dark circles under the king's eyes. His gaze looked slightly out of focus, as if his mind were somewhere else. Or as if he were in shock. The reporter asked another question. The king nodded and answered, "We've inspected the vessel that we were assigned already. And, ah… Yes, we do. We are asking for any volunteer, civilian or military, who would be willing to sign on as a pilot. In exchange we can offer only a small--" The king suddenly cut himself off as Prince Nakula leaned over his shoulder and whispered something into his ear. The king frowned, then corrected himself. "For free," he said.

And then Balarama reached over and clicked off the console screen. "Oh, you are _not_," he said.

"Oh yes I am!" Krishna held out his hands innocently. "Did you hear? They need a pilot! But they can't even pay their pilot! Who else would be willing to take up such a job?"

"But you're not a pilot," Subhadra pointed out. "You don't even have a license to drive a hoverer. You're not even licensed to drive a landbound vehicle."

"But," Krishna said, "I can read an instruction manual."

"Krishna, that's not--"

"And I'm a fast learner."

"But they won't accept you if you don't have a piloting license!"

"They're beggars, they can't really afford to be picky now, can they?"

"This is _insanity_," Balarama hissed. "Krishna, I've put up with a lot of ridiculousness from you over the years. But this is different. You're going to throw your life away, volunteer for a job that you're in no way qualified to do, and probably get yourself and our king killed while doing it. And you won't even give me a _reason _why you want to do so! I can't let you go through with this. I just can't."

Krishna stared at Balarama for a long, hard moment. Then he turned toward his mother. "Mother," he said.

She glanced at him for moment, and her eyes widened in shock. Then she quickly turned away from him. Balarama glanced back and forth between Krishna and his mother, baffled. What had she seen? Krishna looked the same as usual. But Balarama's mother closed her eyes and whispered, "Don't do this to me, Krishna. Not now."

"I'm sorry mother. But I have to go."

And then, Balarama and Krishna and Subhadra's mother nodded her head.

Balarama was aghast. "_Mother_!"

She turned toward him, and when he saw the look in her eyes, he suddenly felt utterly defeated. "Balarama, I'm sorry," she said. Subhadra was staring at her, an almost comical expression of shock on her face. And Krishna was already gone, presumably climbing the ladder toward the crawlspace above their kitchen. Balarama's mother looked at Subhadra, then at Balarama, then said slowly, "I'm sure that you must have noticed this by now, but your brother Krishna is…" She trailed off, frowning, unsure of how to explain herself. Then she finally said, "He's not like you or Subhadra. He's different."

"Now that's an understatement."

"You have _no idea _how different," Balarama's mother suddenly hissed, almost angrily.

Balarama fell silent. He had heard his mother use that tone of voice before, but never directed at him.

Subhadra was giving her mother a strange look. "Mother," she said, "is there something that you know that you're not telling us?"

Balarama's mother nodded, but said, "I know very little, though. Oh so very little. One thing I do know – and the one thing that I will tell you now – is that I promised Krishna a long time ago that when the time came for him to leave, I would let him go."

Subhadra crossed her arms over her chest, clearly not satisfied with this explanation. Neither was Balarama. But Krishna suddenly appeared again, this time dragging an empty trunk behind him. He kissed his mother on the cheek, once, quickly. "Thank you," he said. Then he turned toward Balarama. "Help me pack?"

Balarama shook his head numbly. No, he would not help his brother pack. He couldn't help Krishna pack even if he'd wanted to. He felt as if his brain were going into shutdown mode. There was suddenly too much for him to process at once. The king was gone, Indraprastha belonged to Duryodhana, he didn't know what would become of himself and Kritavarma once the new government was established, his little brother was going to run away (and likely die) for some unfathomable reason that he couldn't explain, and his mother was going to _let _this happen for some unfathomable reason that she refused to explain, and—

Balarama suddenly realized that his comm was ringing again. He pulled it out of his pocket and flipped open the viewscreen. It was another call from Kritavarma, again. Apparently this was urgent.

"Can I get a ride to the port, Balarama?" Krishna was asking as Balarama cupped his comm to his ear. "Oh, and could I borrow some money for an airjump ticket?"

Balarama merely nodded, because he wasn't sure what else he could do anymore.

* * *

II.

The jumper to Hastinapura was nearly deserted. Krishna figured that most of the planet's population was too busy being glued to their console screens to be able to travel anywhere. Well, all the better for him. Krishna had three entire seats all to himself, so he folded down the arm rests dividing the seats, stretched out his legs, and took a long nap. He figured that it might be the last peaceful sleep he would have for a long time.

He awoke when the jumper landed in the port at Hastinapura. Along with the scant few other passengers who had been on the jumper with him, Krishna filed through the port corridors, making his way toward the luggage area. He found his only bag, scanned his claim ticket, and left to find a bus. The entire journey would have been completely uneventful, if he hadn't overheard the shouting as he was exiting the luggage area, which happened to be located not far from the ticket counters where departing passengers were queued up.

"I care little for your pointless laws!" an old man was shouting, his voice carrying clearly across the entire ticketing area and filtering into the luggage area as well. "A man has a right to protect himself! A man has the right to check whatever items in his luggage that he--"

"Sir," a ticket counter agent answered, her voice also rising in volume, "Sir, the laws are _very clear_ that--"

"I am ABOVE your petty laws!"

At this, many of the passengers waiting behind the old man burst into laughter. Krishna sighed, rolled his eyes, and quickly veered toward the ticket counter. He could already see the identity of the shouting old man. He would have recognized that white beard and furiously blazing eyes anywhere. Another quick glance was all that Krishna needed to determine the point of contention between the old man and the counter agent. The old man had an enormous antique axe resting at his feet. The handle was wooden and cracked, and the blade was stained with what Krishna hoped was rust. Krishna wondered how Parashurama had even managed to get as far as the ticket counter while conspicuously carrying an illegal weapon.

"Sir," the ticket counter agent said, "Not only do you not have a permit to be carrying that in the first place, but we have a very strict policy regarding what items are allowed in your checked luggage. If you would just read--"

"I have familiarized myself with your asinine policy. And it does not apply to me!"

More laughter from the crowd beginning to gather behind Parashurama to watch the farce. The counter agent did not look amused, however.

Krishna suddenly placed his hand on Parashurama's shoulder – the old man twitched, momentarily surprised – and said, "Don't be absurd. These people have to protect the rules. It's their duty."

Parashurama snorted. "What are _you _doing here?" He glanced at the trunk that Krishna was pulling with his other hand. "Finally ready to make a move, are you?"

"You shouldn't be carrying that thing around," Krishna said, nodding toward the axe. "You know that only royals and the military are allowed to--"

"I DESPISE THESE SENSELESS LAWS!"

"Sir," the counter agent said, this time addressing Krishna, "Do you know this man?"

"Yes." Krishna understood that he was being asked to remove Parashurama from the line. "Come over here," Krishna said, trying to lead Parashurama toward a waiting area far from the ticket counters. "We need to talk."

Parashurama growled something under his breath, but picked up his axe and started to follow Krishna. The counter agent called after them, "Sir, we're going to have to confiscate your--"

"_NOT UNLESS YOU INTEND TO PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS!_"

"…All right, then." And with that, the counter agent turned her attention to her waiting customers.

Krishna led the old man toward a row of benches lining one wall of a spacious waiting area. They sat down together, and Krishna did his best to ignore the people staring at them. "What are you doing here?" Krishna asked, echoing Parashurama's question from earlier.

The old man snorted. "I can go wherever I please." He glowered a nothing in particular. "Provided that these idiots will let me board a shuttle to the moon, that is."

"You're going to see your student?"

"_Former _student. Yes."

"But Karna is here on the surface, right now."

"Is that so? Hrmph. Even if he's here, he must have left some of his family members back in Anga. Either him, his wife, or his sons would be obligated to welcome me into their home for as long as I need."

Krishna laughed. "Is that all?"

"I want a decent _bath_ once or twice a decade. Is that too much to ask?" Parashurama crossed his arms angrily. "And I want to yell at my idiot _former _student for throwing his lot in with that shitstain of pretender king."

"He won't listen to you."

"He might."

Krishna sighed. "Haven't you screwed things up enough, just by meddling in the first place?"

Parashurama turned his murderous glare toward Krishna. "You dare accuse me of meddling?!" he snarled. "_I_ gave a man what he deserved. _You're_ only upset because now my Karna represents a threat to your precious little Kuru prince--"

"You weren't supposed to pick a side," Krishna said, bristling. "Or play favorites."

Parashurama suddenly laughed. "Only true royalty could be capable of such hypocrisy!" He applauded Krishna. "Well played, Yadava prince. Well played."

"_Keep your voice down_," Krishna hissed. "I'm not--"

"Oh, yes, right, I forgot. You're just a cowherd." He smirked at Krishna. "If you throw in your lot with the exiled king, you wouldn't be able to keep up that lowborn façade for long." Then he turned his head toward the ceiling. "He's still out there, you know. Jarasandha."

"I'll deal with him when the time comes."

"You don't seem to have put a lot of forethought into any of this."

"I don't need to," Krishna said, standing up. "If I can be with Arjuna, then things will work out."

Parashurama eyed him coldly. "You have a great deal of faith in that man, don't you."

"Who wouldn't?"

"Anybody with even the tiniest grain of sense. These vain, greedy, self-important royals deserve our contempt, not our support."

"Look, do you want to see Karna or not?" Krishna asked, impatiently. "I don't have the authority to get you on a shuttle as long as you insist on carrying that axe. But _he_ might. I can pay for your fare if you'll bus with me into the city."

Parashurama pouted, as petulant as a small child. "I don't need the charity of a Yadava prince. Or a cowherd. Whatever you are."

"Fine. Stay here then. I have a universe to save." Krishna picked up the handle of his trunk and briskly walked away. He was not surprised when, a few moments later, he heard Parashurama's footsteps following behind him.

* * *

III.

"Not those," Sahadeva said, pointing to a stack of discs visible on the video screen. "Please. Let us keep them. What possible use could you have for them?!"

"It's not about use," Durmada said brusquely, motioning for his aides to gather up the discs. "It's about upholding the terms of the agreement. You gave up _all _of your possessions, remember?"

Sahadeva shook his head and said nothing. He lowered his head and watched silently as, visible on the video screen but located on the other side of the world, Durmada's aides boxed up the discs. Finally, Arjuna put his hand on Sahadeva's shoulder and said quietly, "It's all right. They're going to put it in storage and make sure that it stays safe until we come back. All right?"

"You don't know that."

"I do know that." Arjuna turned toward the video screen, toward Durmada. "We have your word, right?"

"Of course. None of your personal effects will be destroyed or altered. Merely stored."

"Then please," Arjuna said, "take care of these discs. They're holos of our mother." Specifically, of Sahadeva's mother. But Arjuna didn't want to clarify that. Madri had been as much his mother as she had been Sahadeva's mother.

Durmada gestured, and his aides fanned out throughout Sahadeva's quarters in Indraprastha, taking his clothes and jewels, ripping the paintings and hangings off his wall, confiscating his books, his discs, his holos, the flatscreen console—

Sahadeva winced as he watched, via the video screen, as Durmada lifted an elegantly engraved vase into his arms. "That was a gift from Uncle Shalya," Sahadeva whispered to Arjuna. "Our great-grandmother commissioned it, he said."

Arjuna squeezed Sahadeva's hand, and said nothing. His own quarters – both his guest quarters in Hastinapura and his private rooms in Indraprastha - had already been stripped bare, earlier that day. Like Sahadeva, he had been allowed to watch over the packing of his Indraprastha quarters via video screen, while at the same time Duryodhana's brothers stripped him of whatever possessions he had brought to Hastinapura. Now all of Arjuna's fine clothes and jewelry were gone. He was, for the second time in his life, currently dressed in civilian work clothes, taken from the storage hold of the ship that he and his brothers had been assigned to.

Those were the new rules. They were allowed to start with their ship and whatever food, clothes, and tools were currently stored on board. That, and nothing else.

Arjuna watched Durmada's aides rolling up an antique tapestry. Half of Duryodhana's family was slated to move into the palace at Indraprastha. But the palace was being stripped bare before the move; it was, apparently, Duryodhana's way of keeping his word not to harm any of Yudhisthira's possessions during the period of exile. Also, Arjuna realized, it was a way give him and his brothers an extra dose of pain and humiliation before they left. Seeing all of his wordly possession bundled up and shipped off to storage hadn't exactly been a pleasant experience.

"Change your clothes," Vikata suddenly said. He was with the two brothers in the monitor room. Vikata tossed an armful of clothing at Sahadeva. "And take off your jewelry."

Sahadeva turned around, made as if to step out of the room, then paused when he saw the guards posted at the door, making no move to step aside and let him through. He met Arjuna's eyes, but Arjuna only looked away. They had already been stripped of their clothes in front of the entire assembled royal family and court; what did it matter, then, to strip again in front of only a handful of people?

Sahadeva reluctantly turned away from Vikata and began taking off his clothes; a moment later he turned around again, wearing workslacks, boots, and plain, unadorned shirt. "How do I look?" he asked Arjuna, trying to crack a joke.

"Stunning," Arjuna said with a laugh. It was only a half-lie. Sahadeva's somewhat inhuman physical beauty could hardly be marred by merely unattractive clothing. Arjuna glanced toward Vikata just in time to see him shoot a jealous glare at Sahadeva. Then Arjuna quickly grabbed Sahadeva's hand and said, "Come on. Let's get out of here."

Sahadeva nodded, and let himself be led out of the monitor room. Arjuna had shown up in the monitor room moments before, under the pretense of supporting his brother while Durmada did his job. The reality, however, was that Arjuna had just wanted an escape from having to see either Nakula, or Yudhisthira, or Draupadi, or anybody else whose eyes he still felt unable to meet. The monitor room had been a temporary refuge, but now even that refuge was gone.

Well, no sense in delaying the inevitable.

They found Yudhisthira first. He was curiously alone, separated from his usual entourage of aides and bodyguards, walking brusquely along the edge of a reflecting pool not unlike that which had humiliated Duryodhana not so long before. Arjuna pulled Sahadeva along, quickening his pace to catch up with his brother. "Hey! Where are you going?"

Yudhisthira paused in mid-stride and waited for his brothers to catch up. "Final business with Duryodhana," he mumbled, by way of explanation. His voice sounded quiet, and strangely distant.

Arjuna instantly didn't like the sound of that. "Where are--?"

"I told Bhima not to come. Or Draupadi. Or Nakula." Yudhisthira glanced over at his remaining two brothers, as if trying to assess how likely they were to kill Duryodhana on sight.

"You can't do this alone," Sahadeva suddenly said. "I mean, you shouldn't. Be alone with Duryodhana."

"We'll go with you," Arjuna said, quickly. He met his brother's eyes, trying to communicate his silent promise: no matter how tempting it may be, he would _not _send an arrow straight into Duryodhana's heart. And it would be tempting. But Arjuna sensed, somehow instinctively, that protecting his brother was more important. He wasn't sure exactly what Yudhisthira needed protecting _from_. But Arjuna knew that Duryodhana was evil – more evil that he had ever really imagined – and Arjuna could also see that Yudhisthira was still so broken, so _vulnerable._ Sahadeva was right. Yudhisthira couldn't face Duryodhana alone, not in his current state of mind.

Yudhisthira nodded, as if he understood Arjuna's train of thought. "Come with me, then," he said. It was a feeble attempt at an order.

Arjuna and Sahadeva followed Yudhisthira as he finished his last walk through the palace. Arjuna felt a strange, angry tightening in his chest as he realized that they were headed toward the ceremonial throne room. _Damn you, Duryodhana_, he thought, tasting sour hatred in his mouth.

Duryodhana had already posted guards outside the throne room. They stopped Yudhisthira from entering. "Are you unarmed?"

"Obviously," Yudhisthira said, wearily holding up his arms to demonstrate.

The guards glanced at Sahadeva, then at Arjuna. Arjuna knew full well that he was not unarmed – he could never _be_ unarmed, not as long as he was possessed by Gandiva – but he held his hand over his heart and said, "I swear I carry no harmful intentions. I only wish to support my brother."

The guards let them pass.

Yudhisthira mustered up enough dignity to stride into the great hall beyond the doors as if he owned the palace. Arjuna and Sahadeva followed a step behind him.

Duryodhana was settled comfortably on his throne. Sanjaya and several of Duryodhana's brothers were at his side. "Well, hurry up," Duryodhana said impatiently. "Let's have them."

Yudhisthira held out a single data disc, which Sanjaya stepped forward to take.

Duryodhana shot him a suspicious look. "That's _it_?" he said. "That's your entire staff directory?"

Sanjaya inserted the disc into his reader and clicked it open. "There's, ah…. There is only one name and one comm number here," he said.

"It's the only name you need," Yudhisthira replied calmly.

" 'Kritavarma'?" Sanjaya read, incredulously.

"Talk to him," Yudhisthira said, addressing Duryodhana directly. "He has the power to make all of Indraprastha cooperate with the handover. Or not."

Duryodhana sighed and rubbed his forehead, as if fending off a headache. "Do I really want to ask just who exactly this 'Kritavarma' is?"

"Technically, he's a large-animal veterinarian."

Duryodhana looked aghast. "A commoner?!"

"Yes."

"What kind of government were you running over there, anyway?!"

Yudhisthira said nothing. Arjuna noticed Sahadeva step incrementally close to his brother, though. Arjuna did the same.

Duryodhana, unfortunately, seemed angry. "I can't unify the government offices if you don't cooperate. I need--" He cut himself off when the sound of a comm ringing cut through the hall. "Damn," he murmured. "That's the emergency line."

Instantly, Sanjaya was at his side, holding a comm to his ear.

Duryodhana listened for a moment, his face growing redder and redder. Finally he turned his furious gaze toward Yudhisthira and hissed, "_You!_"

Yudhisthira dithered, confused. "What? What is it?"

"You put him up to this, _didn't you_?!"

Yudhisthira shook his head, looking more confused than ever. But Arjuna turned his head and met Sahadeva's eyes, and they both knew, in an instant, who the problem was.

"Bhima," Sahadeva said.

* * *

IV.

The crowd gathered around the dock had swollen with curious onlookers, both government officials and commoners alike. Bhima and Nakula were isolated on one end of a pier, surrounded by Duryodhana's guards, weapons pointed both inward at the two brothers and outward at the crowd that seemed soon inclined to start getting too close. Bhima didn't seem to notice or care about the guns pointed at him. He was sitting down on the pier, Nakula sitting beside him. The two of them were soaked to the bone, although their clothes were already drying beneath the hot midday sun. Bhima was grinning to himself.

"What did you _do_?!" Yudhisthira asked, as soon as the guards parted briefly to let him through – although they did not lower their drawn weapons, not for an instant.

"I sank the jumper," Bhima answered simply.

"_How_?!"

"I punched a hole in the hull."

"_BHIMA--_!!"

"What are they going to do?" Nakula asked, dumping water from his boots. "Arrest us? They can't. We're in exile now, officially."

Yudhisthira felt a hot swell of rage bubbling up in his body. "Bhima… Tell me… exactly _why _you would do such a thing…"

Bhima shrugged. "Duryodhana doesn't need all of his cargo jumpers anymore, does he? You gave him all of ours, remember?" He finally turned his gaze toward Yudhisthira. "The amphibious jumper from Indraprastha had just arrived. And I just didn't like the idea of a jumper full of our _stuff _sitting there, waiting for Duryodhana to comb through it. So… You know."

"A little wanton destruction to finish off the day," Nakula said, apparently quite satisfied with Bhima's handiwork.

Yudhisthira turned on Nakula immediately. "_You _suggested this, didn't you?!"

"Maybe."

"I was thinking of it before he said it," Bhima stated, calmly.

"And besides," said Nakula. "We promised to hand over our stuff to Duryodhana, but we didn't make any specific promises about whether it would be on the bottom of the bay or not."

"But that's…" Yudhisthira waved his arms helplessly. "Those were our belongings! We were going to get them back!"

"_Some_ of our belongings," Nakula said, paying more attention to the task of picking mud out from beneath his fingernails than he was paying attention to his brother. "Mostly my stuff and yours. The rest hasn't even been packed up yet, much less left Indraprastha." Suddenly he turned toward Yudhisthira and grinned. "You should've seen the look on their faces when Bhima boarded the jumper. I was just tagging along."

"You both could have drowned."

"Believe it or not, it's not _that _hard to escape a sinking ship."

"Basic survival skill," Bhima added.

Yudhisthira was beyond furious. He was seeing red. He couldn't even think of what to say next. "_Nakula,_" he hissed, deciding to cast his fury upon the most obvious target, "_how dare you--_"

"Awfully late for you to be getting angry, now, isn't it?" Nakula said. He regarded Yudhisthira contemptuously with his strange, inhuman golden eyes. "Duryodhana treated us like slaves and you said nothing. Duryodhana tried to rape our wife and you said nothing."

"Also, I swore to kill most of our family," Bhima added. "You didn't seem too upset about that, either. This? This is nothing. It was just a ship." Bhima finally stood up, standing at his full imposing height. "Come on," he said, stepping neatly through the circle of guards that wordlessly made way for him to pass. "We should get going."

Yudhisthira nodded silently to Duryodhana's guards as they parted the gathering crowd to make way for Bhima and his brothers. Yudhisthira wasn't sure if Duryodhana's guards were on his side or Duryodhana's side; but either way, they weren't preventing Bhima or Nakula from leaving the dock. They were still pointing their weapons at the exiled princes, but they certainly weren't preventing them from leaving the dock.

The three brothers walked in silence down the length of the dock. The crowd of citizens that had gathered to watch them grew eerily, expectantly silent as well.

Finally, however, Bhima paused beside a few military autos that were parked near the access ramp for another cargo jumper. "I feel like Duryodhana has a few too may of these things, too," he suddenly said, thoughtfully.

Before Yudhisthira could stop him, Bhima was casually lifting one auto into the air and bringing it down on top of a second, smashing both vehicles to pieces.

The crowd exploded in cheers and applause. Duryodhana's guards stood by silently, not joining the cheering crowd, but making no move to silence them – or to stop Bhima. And then suddenly, it was too late. The crowd surged, swarming around the wrecked autos, spilling down the dock area, and marching out into the streets of Hastinapura. "DOWN WITH THE TYRANT!" they chanted. "DOWN WITH THE CHEAT! DOWN WITH THE TYRANT! DOWN WITH THE CHEAT!"

Yudhisthira watched the crowd flowing around him, stomping, chanting, and clapping. He felt dizzy, like his head was swimming. Bhima had just started a riot, and Yudhisthira was helpless to stop it. Not that it mattered, of course. He and his family were still bound to the terms of their exile, no matter how much the citizens of Hastinapura chanted and protested. The only thing that the angry crowd could really change was how much of a mess Duryodhana would be left to clean up, once Yudhisthira and his brothers finally left.

* * *

V.

Duryodhana swung his sword blindly. It smashed into a priceless vase and sent the precious work of art tumbling to the floor, shattering into hundreds of sharp, jagged pieces.

"DOWN WITH THE TYRANT!"

He roared and swung his sword again, slicing into a shelf of antique books.

"DOWN WITH THE CHEAT!" The chanting voices still pounded into his ears. It didn't matter that the protesters were located far, far below him and far, far away, unable to approach even the outer walls of the palace compound due to military presence. It didn't matter. Their voices carried across the clean ocean air, filtering through the windows and walls of Durydodhana's private chambers, pounding into his eardrums as strongly as if the idiot protesters had been right there in the room _with_ him.

Duryodhana flung aside his sword. He began tearing books of his shelves and ripping them with his bare hands. "I didn't cheat!" he screamed at the windows and walls. "I didn't cheat! _I didn't cheat!_" The ice was escaping his hands uncontrollably now, coating everything he touched with a layer of frozen anger. "I did what I had to do, you ingrates! _I RE-UNITED THE KINGDOM! I DID WHAT I HAD TO DO!"_

Duryodhana flung himself down on his bed – now covered in a layer of hard, frozen ice – and clamped his hands over his ears. "Don't listen to them," he mumbled to himself, pressing his face against the cold ice covering his bed, pressing his frozen hands over his ears. He closed his eyes. _Don't listen to them. Don't listen to them. Don't listen to them._

Ice was covering the carpet on the floor and coating the ceiling above his head. Duryodhana clenched his fists against his ears, and his bedposts froze and cracked sharply. He opened his eyes, sat up, and felt like cowering in fear when he saw the frozen stalagmites extending down from the ceiling.

_Look at what you did._

"It's just an illusion," Duryodhana mumbled to himself. He took a deep breath, and forced himself under control again. He waved his hands, and in an instant, all of the ice was gone. His chambers were clean and dry and warm, as if no surface had ever been touched by his frozen wrath at all.

But there were still huge cracks splitting apart his wooden bedposts.

Duryodhana sat on his bed and buried his face in his hands. He could still hear the protestors outside the palace. So what if he had cheated? He had needed to reunite the kingdom, and had done so without bloodshed. So what if he had a terrible power that he still needed to keep secret? It didn't make him a monster. And just having power wasn't enough to make him a tyrant by default…

"MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER!!" the protestors were shouting now.

Duryodhana suddenly lifted his head out of his hands and laughed. His laugh sounded slightly unhinged even to his own ears, but he didn't care. If only they knew. If only! He laughed again, wondering what the protestors would say if they could have seen the icicles dripping from his ceiling only moments ago. They didn't know the half of it. They didn't know--!

"Monster, huh?" Duryodhana looked up at his ceiling, now bare of icicles. He felt cold. He remembered that it had been slightly chilly in the dice hall, even with all of his brothers and most of his court packed in there. The palace cooling system had been working full blast. He remembered how Draupadi's nipples had looked, pointed and pert beneath the fabric of her sari, erect both from the cold in the hall and from the thrill that Duryodhana knew the little whore was getting from being exposed to the eyes of so many virile, eager men.

Duryodhana felt a fresh surge of frustration tightening his chest, and his groins. He had been so _close_. He closed his eyes and could so easily imagine the sights that he had been denied – Draupadi's bare breasts heaving as her breath quickened with rage, the pain and humiliation on her face as she would have been paraded around the hall naked, the _look _that would have been on Yudhisthira's face as Duryodhana would have taken his nude wife in his arms. Duryodhana could imagine all too easily what it would have felt like to fuck her. How tight she would have been. How she would have fought against him. How her screams of anger would have eventually given away to screams of pleasure. How she would have begged him for more, insatiable whore that she was.

Duryodhana sighed with longing, his hand slipping down into his pants. How long _had _it been since he'd had a woman? He'd never even had a real woman, anyway. He'd fucked a few servants on the side, and had one time even managed to lure the daughter of his Minister of Defense into his private baths for several intensely pleasurable hours. But he had never had a woman that had been worthy enough to be in a public relationship with him. Draupadi would have been worthy, though. Whore that she was, she was at least worthy of being _broken _by him.

Duryodhana suddenly realized that his hand was stuffed down his pants, and pulled it out, disgusted with himself. _Ugh. _A moment ago he had been smashing apart his personal possessions and screaming while listening to a bunch of protestors outside his palace, and now he was _masturbating _and thinking about his cousins' wife while listening to a bunch of protestors outside his palace.

"Pull it together, Duryodhana," he said, sliding off his bed and standing up shakily. "Pull it together. You have to pull your kingdom together. You have to pull yourself together."

_And stop talking to yourself, it makes you sound like a crazy person._

"Can do." Duryodhana surveyed the damage in his room – the torn books, the smashed vase, and the cracked bedposts. That could all be repaired. He stumbled over toward a mirror, and stared at his own face. There were deep shadows underneath his eyes. His skin was beginning to age and wrinkle. He looked awful.

"You look awful."

Duryodhana turned just in time to see Bhisma quietly closing the door behind him. "We heard you breaking things," he said. He glanced over at the broken vase, the torn books, and the sword that Duryodhana had flung to the ground. "That vase was a gift from Gandhara," he said.

"It's just… a _thing. _When they get broken, things can be replaced."

"But not people."

Duryodhana glared at his grandfather. "Did you come here just to spit pithy sayings at me?"

Bhisma returned the glare a thousand-times fold. "That is not how you speak to your grandfather," he said. His voice was even colder than the ice which had been covering Duryodhana's bed moments ago.

Duryodhana switched tactics immediately. "I need to be alone."

"No, you don't. You _need_ to get a speechwriter in here, you _need_ to get out on that balcony, and you _need_ to say something to unite your people before your kingdom falls apart beneath your feet."

"Then fine. Make yourself useful and call a speechwriter." Duryodhana stormed across the room and slumped down into a chair. "My comm isn't working." This was true. Over the years Duryodhana had gotten better about controlling and preventing the occasional leakages of his power that seemed to cause the electronic equipment around him to malfunction. But sometimes – especially when he lost his temper – things short-circuited anyway.

Bhisma still stood by the door of the room, silently. Then he said, "Duryodhana."

Duryodhana buried his face in his hands. "Go away," he mumbled. He didn't have the strength to face Bhisma right now. And besides, it was too late anyway. Bhisma felt cold and far away. Duryodhana wouldn't have blamed him for never wanting to come close again.

But Bhisma did come close, then. Very close. Duryodhana lifted his head out of his hands in time to see Bhisma kneeling before him. Bhisma reached up, and grasped Duryodhana's hands in his. He squeezed Duryodhana's hands tightly. "You're as cold as ice."

"Bad circulation."

Bhisma shook his head. Then he looked up at Duryodhana and asked, in a sad, plaintive voice that Duryodhana had never heard his grandfather use before, "Why?"

Duryodhana was taken aback. "Why… Why what? Why I _did _it? I did it for you and for Father. I did it to reunite the kingdom."

Bhisma shook his head again. "No, that's not it." He looked up at Duryodhana, and Duryodhana felt his heart breaking when he saw the sorrow in his grandfather's eyes. "Why are you so far away from me?" Bhisma asked. "You're sitting right in front of me, and yet it feels like you're a thousand light-years away." He closed his eyes, and squeezed Duryodhana's hands tightly. "Don't go, Duryodhana," he whispered. "Don't go down that path."

Duryodhana didn't know what to say. He felt his breath rasping in his throat, but no words would come out. Finally he said, in a hoarse whisper, "I'm not going anywhere."

Bhisma opened his eyes. He regarded Duryodhana sadly, but said nothing. Duryodhana looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes. Maybe it was no use lying. Maybe Bhisma could already see the cold, dark place where Duryodhana was trapped. Duryodhana bit his lip, and listened to the protestors again. The voice of the protestors outside, and the ice inside of him, they were all pulling him further into that cold, dark place. But the warmth and weight of his grandfather's hands were still there, anchoring him, keeping him from drifting away. Duryodhana took a deep breath, and decided to let himself be anchored. For now. He leaned forward, close to Bhisma, and said, "I've sinned. A lot. Haven't I?"

"Yes. You have."

"What should I do?"

Bhisma reached up with one hand, and stroked Duryodhana's hair, the way that he had used to when Duryodhana had been a child. "For now," Bhisma said, "You must fulfill your dharma. And your dharma is that of this planet's king. Your people are rioting. You need to put a stop to it."

Duryodhana nodded, solemnly. "And…?"

"Pray."

"Is that all?"

"No." Bhisma tenderly touched Duryodhana's cheek and said, "Promise me that you won't forget how much I love you." He kissed Duryodhana's hand. "And I swear that I will always be by your side. Always and forever."

Duryodhana said nothing. He refused to acknowledge that he felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. Finally, desperately trying to prevent his voice from hitching, he asked quietly, "…Then do you forgive me?"

Bhisma let go of Duryodhana's hands, and stood up, slowly. "It is not my role to forgive you. Only the Lord can redeem you from your sins. _My _role," he said, offering a hand out to Duryodhana and then pulling him out of the chair, "is to support Hastinapura's king. And to guide my grandson along the path of righteousness." He was squeezing Duryodhana's hand again, painfully. "I cannot do either of those things if you turn away from me."

Duryodhana nodded, silently. Finally Bhisma let go of his hands.

"Is your comm really broken?" Bhisma asked, suddenly all business. Duryodhana nodded silently again, and Bhisma pulled out his own. "Here's the plan," he said, punching in numbers as he spoke to Duryodhana. "We're going to put your aunt Kunti in front of the protesters right away, and have _her _calm them down. Vidura has a speech written for you, and he's on his way now. You will have time to practice it _once _before you go out on that balcony. Is that clear? I've already arranged transport for Yudhisthira and his brothers to port. Their ship is scheduled to launch in one hour. You and I _will _be there to see them off. This riot _will _disperse well before then. Understood?"

Duryodhana nodded for a third time. Things were out of his hands now, but that was perhaps the way that they should be. He was in no condition to be taking charge of anything, not at the moment. But Bhisma understood that. And that was good.

* * *

VI.

The military presence surrounding the spaceport kept the crowds – both the curious and the outright rioting – as well as the media at bay. Yudhisthira was grateful for that.

Not that there wasn't enough chaos inside the launch bay, though.

"Our prospects look grim," Draupadi said, greeting Yudhisthira by handing him an electronic notebook. "I've catalogued the food stores available on the ship. We have enough to last us through a two-week jump. That will put us in the Gajapati system. We can make our first port there."

Yudhisthira looked at the notebook in his hands, then turned his gaze toward the ship. _Their _ship. It was resting on its surface legs in the midst of the mostly-deserted port. It was small – barely large enough to take a crew of ten on a deep-space voyage – and old. Depressingly old. It was a junker by any standards, and Yudhisthira knew full well that Duryodhana had chosen _that _ship to give to his cousins exactly because it was too obsolete to continue using, but not damaged enough to justify scrapping. Duryodhana had just wanted to get rid of it.

"Also," Draupadi added, still all business, "We need to name the damn thing."

"Name…?"

"The _ship. _It was decommissioned. Now we need to give it a new name. It's inauspicious to launch in an un-named ship. And I've been listening to the console… Bhima, did you start a riot?"

"Yes," Bhima answered.

"_Excellent._" She stood up on her tiptoes to kiss Bhima's chin. Then she moved on to give Nakula a kiss on the lips.

Yudhisthira summarily ignored this. "Sahadeva and Arjuna are coming any moment now. So that means that we're all--"

"No," said Draupadi. "We're not all here. We still need a pilot."

Yudhisthira looked around helplessly. "Draupadi, I don't know where to _find _a pilot! Duryodhana forbid all of the qualified military personnel from applying to travel with us. And nobody outside of the military has a piloting license!"

Nakula eyed the nameless ship thoughtfully. "Does that thing come with an instruction manual?"

"Nakula, _no._"

"Oh, shut up." Nakula was clearly at the end of his patience with Yudhisthira. "Do you have a better idea? _No?_ Then shut _up _and go do something useful." He pointed at a pile of provisions – dried rice, lentils, and medical supplies – still piled beside the small loading bay of the ship. "Go over _there _and start lifting."

And just like that, Yudhisthira reached the end of his rope too. He threw the electronic notebook to the ground and whirled toward Nakula. "You sniveling, selfish little--"

"Oh, so _now_ he finally gets angry--!"

"Don't you _dare_ order me around, Nakula! I'm the eldest and--"

"—And obeying you is what got us into this mess in the first place!"

That was when Yudhisthira snapped, too. Really snapped, just lost it and saw red. And that was when he raised his hand, preparing for a strike. Bhima stepped neatly between the two of them before Yudhisthira could do something that he would really regret, before he could send the whole family past the point of no return. "That's enough," Bhima hissed at Yudhisthira. Then he turned toward Nakula. "_You _go over there and load those supplies. Work off that damn temper of yours." Then back toward Yudhisthira. "Pull yourself together."

"Oh thanks, Bhima. Real helpful advice."

Bhima turned away from him angrily. "You won't be helped, will you?"

Draupadi touched Bhima's shoulder. "Let's go," she said. "I'm still trying to catalogue the pre-launch repairs that need to be made. Will you help me?"

Bhima nodded, and a moment later, he and Draupadi boarded the ship. Nakula trudged over to the loading bay, swearing under his breath the whole time. Yudhisthira was left alone, standing in the middle of the launch bay uselessly. He bent over and picked up the electronic notebook that he had flung to the ground. His hands trembled as he pressed its keys, trying to discern if he had damaged it. He wasn't sure what hurt more. Nakula's rage and contempt, he had expected that. Bhima was only trying to help, Yudhisthira supposed, but he was going about it in a decidedly un-helpful way, what with the sinking ships and starting riots and all. But what hurt the worst, Yudhisthira thought, was the way that Draupadi was simply _ignoring _him. Even when she _had _been speaking to him a few moments ago, she had been avoiding his eyes, and had handed over the notebook in a way so as to avoid the touch of his hand.

Yudhisthira winced. He could hardly stand to meet her eyes, either. He couldn't even begin to fathom what it would take for her to ever forgive him.

Yudhisthira switched the mode of the electronic notebook with a press of a button, turning it into a mini-console. He flipped through the airwaves, watching broadcast video of the riots. Then he saw Duryodhana on the video screen. Yudhisthira's breath caught in his throat.

Duryodhana was speaking, addressing a rioting crowd around the palace.

Yudhisthira closed his eyes and listened to the words. Powerful words. Duryodhana was _good, _as usual. Yudhisthira listened to the tinny sound of the crowd coming from the console speakers, the crowd that was beginning to cheer instead of jeering at their king.

"So they're _cheering_ for him now?"

Yudhisthira snapped his eyes open. Nakula was standing in front of him, looking down at the console screen. Nakula shook his head in disgust. "Gods. Our subjects are so _stupid._"

Yudhisthira glared at Nakula. "Whether Duryodhana deserves the love of the people or not is irrelevant. They must love him, for he is the king. Without a strong king, it is Kuru's people who will suffer."

Nakula rolled his eyes. "Levels of irony this high ought to be fatal."

"What?"

"Nothing." Then, suddenly, Nakula leaned in close to Yudhisthira. "Do you know why I told Bhima to sink that ship?" he asked, his voice a breathy whisper.

Yudhisthira shook his head.

Nakula glanced around quickly, to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping. Then he said, "_My _stuff was in the cargo hold of that ship. Including all of the data files that they confiscated from my personal equipment. Designs for… things… Things that I would never actually make, you know, but that I designed."

"By 'things' you mean…?"

"Weapons. And that's not all." Nakula's voice was barely audible now. "Remember that project that Sahadeva and I started? The one where we were trying to replicate Arjuna's speed and movement with Gandiva mechanically? We collected a lot of data for that. A lot of video of Arjuna using Gandiva. Holos, too. Speed measurements. Snap-captures. We had the most sophisticated technology on Kuru at our disposal, and we still couldn't precisely film him when he started shooting _really _fast. But what we got was enough. Enough to maybe hurt Arjuna if somebody who was an enemy ever found those videos and started studying them."

Yudhisthira stared at him. "Nakula, you don't think…?"

"I was just trying to protect my brother. That's better than you've done so far."

Yudhisthira could say nothing to this, so Nakula, apparently satisfied with his zinger, stormed off again.

Fortunately, Yudhisthira didn't have to stand and stew in his own misery for long before Arjuna and Sahadeva arrived. "Why don't you turn that thing off," Arjuna said, reaching for Yudhisthira's notebook console. "We have to get ready to launch."

"We can't launch without a pilot," Yudhisthira pointed out, again.

"Hey," said Sahadeva, pointing to the opposite side of the bay. "Why are you making Nakula do the heavy lifting? Where's Bhima?"

"I--"

"Mother says that she's coming after she's done speaking on Duryodhana's behalf," Arjuna continued, rushing to report everything to Yudhisthira. "Duryodhana's court will be here in an hour, too. I mean, the whole court. Everybody. To see us off. We have to get ready!"

"I--"

"You're not going to come up with a pilot in one hour, are you?" Sahadeva said, more of a statement than a question.

Yudhisthira pressed one hand against his forehead, trying to fend off a sudden headache. Running a kingdom was one thing, but _this _was turning out to be a completely different set of impossible tasks. "I'll think of something," he told Sahadeva tersely.

"Pray to the Lord," Arjuna said.

"Arjuna, that's not very helpful."

"The Lord won't desert us."

"But does the Lord know how to pilot a spaceship?!"

"That's not--" Suddenly Arjuna fell silent, his eyes widening as he apparently spotted something behind Yudhisthira. Yudhisthira turned and saw two unfamiliar commoners striding across the bay toward them. No, not unfamiliar. Yudhisthira squinted, and then he remembered where he had seen one of the pair – the younger man – before. It was Krishna, the younger brother of Balarama. And he was accompanied by an old man with a knotted white beard and a sour-looking face.

Yudhisthira's questions were immediate. What was Balarama's brother doing all the way over here, and why had the guards posted around the launch area let him through?!

Krishna and the old man walked right up to Yudhisthira. Neither of them bowed. "Hi," Krishna said. "I heard that you needed a pilot."

Yudhisthira stared at him. "You're, uh… Balarama's brother, right?"

"Yeah. We've met before." He suddenly glanced over Yudhisthira's shoulder, toward Arjuna. "Right, Arjuna?"

* * *

VII.

The convoy of hoverers crawled slowly through the air above the city streets of Hastinapura. Duryodhana waved at the crowds gathered to cheer for him. He waved as long as he could, until the skyscrapers thinned and the open air emptied of his supporters. With the press of a button, the windows in his hoverer went opaque again. Duryodhana leaned back in his seat and sighed.

"You handled that well," Karna said.

"You helped me."

"No I didn't. I just stood next to you while you spoke. I didn't do anything."

"But that was enough." Duryodhana glanced sideways at Karna. "They _love _you, you know. The lowborns think of you as one of their own. They'll support whomever you support."

Karna laughed. "Is that why you keep me around?"

"Yes. Well, that and the fact that I like you."

"Oh, I'm so flattered."

"You should be. My taste is impeccable." Duryodhana regarded Karna for a moment, then said, "Tomorrow I'm going to send you to Indraprastha."

Karna was startled. "Tomorrow I have to be back in Anga. Vrishasena has an archery competition."

"Fine. The following day, then."

"Why me?"

"I told you. The lowborns there will respond better to you than to me. I'd send Ashwatthama, but, you know, he still looks too Panchalan, and they're kind of backwards about those things over there."

"But they loved Draupadi--"

"They liked her because she has huge breasts and because she's always shamelessly flashing them with those whorish clothes of hers. Can't say the same for Ashwatthama." Duryodhana pulled out his comm and began fiddling with it, typing a message even as he continued to speak to Karna. "I want to put you in charge of the Mayasabha. That palace needs a devakin resident. It's kind of hard to explain, but that's what it needs, I think."

Karna was quiet for a moment. Then he said softly, "Shrutakiirti is pregnant."

Duryodhana snapped off his comm immediately. "Again?!"

"Well… Yes. I mean, we both decided that we want a large family. This isn't an unexpected pregnancy." He looked Duryodhana directly – and defiantly – in his eyes. "I need to spend more time on Anga from now on."

Duryodhana looked away from him. "I know. I know you do. But I need you too right now. Especially right now. It's not… It's not just because the lowborns like you, although that helps. It's just that I _need _you."

Karna was silent for a long moment, then he slowly reached over and grasped Duryodhana's hand. "I made a vow to you, didn't I?" he said. "And I'll stand by that vow. Anything for you. Anything. All you ever have to do is ask." Then he pulled his hand away from Duryodhana's hand. "But if you make me miss Vrishashena's competition tomorrow, I'm going to take ask Shrutakiirti to take a holo of his sad little face and send it straight to your comm."

Duryodhana winced. "Fine. I won't. I swear."

They rode in silence after that, but it was not an uncomfortable silence. Duryodhana was surprised to find that he was dozing lightly by the time that their hoverer touched down near the port where his damn cousins were set to launch from.

Duryodhana and his entourage landed well within the circle of military protection now ringing the port, far from the civilians that had gathered in the surrounding area, some to cheer, others to protest.

Inside the launchbay, Duryodhana strode like the king that he was, Karna at his side, across the vast expanse of the bay floor. He was surrounded by his bodyguards, and confident that nothing and nobody would try to stand in his way. Which was why he was surprised when somebody did.

"So there you are!"

And old, withered man with a long white beard and a sour face was marching across the bay floor directly toward Duryodhana. Duryodhana's guards drew their weapons. There was something intense and insane about the old man's eyes. But Karna suddenly stepped forward and ordered the guards, "Drop your weapons."

"But--"

"His Majesty is in no danger." Karna stepped out of the ring of bodyguards, toward the old man, his arms open in an invitation to embrace. "You came all this way to see me? But you told me that you didn't want to ever look upon my face again."

"You stupid, stupid man." The old man returned Karna's embrace even as he yelled at him. "I leave you alone for a decade or two and this is what you make of yourself?! I didn't come all this way just to see you. I came all this way to _give you a smack upside the head,_ you adharmic imbecile!"

Karna stepped away from the old man's embrace. "Good to see that you haven't changed." He turned toward Duryodhana, who was waiting rather impatiently for an explanation. "Your Majesty, this is my guru Parashurama. He taught me how to use Vijaya."

Duryodhana was about to bow and show the proper respect, when the old man suddenly snapped, "Don't you _dare _call that honorless sack of shit 'Your Majesty.' You think I'm going to stand by and do nothing while my pupil sucks on the limp sore-ridden dick of this false king?!" He reached out, grabbed one of Karna's golden earrings, and yanked on it as hard as he could. "You come with me. _Now. _We need to talk."

For a moment, Duryodhana was absolutely stunned. He braced himself, waiting for the inevitable moment when Karna would strike back against the insolent fool who had so vulgarly insulted his king. With his fists, most likely, but with Vijaya if Duryodhana was really lucky.

But that moment never came. Karna stumbled forward, and the old man kept pulling on his earring angrily. The two of them began to step awkwardly away from Duryodhana, the old man pulling on Karna's ear and grunting angrily, and Karna – bizarrely – making no move to resist him. Karna turned his face briefly toward Duryodhana, mouthed "I'm sorry" with a chagrined look on his face, and then turned away again.

Duryodhana figured that he ought to be fuming at Karna for leaving him in his moment of need.

But the image of Karna being pulled by his earring across the bay floor amused Duryodhana enough that he allowed the scene to unfold as it did. He turned away from the old man and Karna, and continued his way silently across the bay floor. He figured that he could ask Karna for an explanation later. And it had _better _be a good explanation, Duryodhana told himself, feeling a brief twinge of anger again. But the anger passed.

_Wait,_ Duryodhana suddenly thought. _How did that old man get past the military blockade_--?

But he didn't have time to think about that anymore. He had reached the parting point – the farthest edge of the launch bay where humans were allowed so safely stand during a launch. Duryodhana paused and waited, his guards falling into position around him. There were other hoverers arriving behind his. Eventually his court fell into place around him: Bhisma. Ashwatthama and his father. Dusshasana and several of his brothers. Dusshala. Yuyutsu. Shakuni. Duryodhana's parents. Vidura came last, holding Kunti's trembling hands in his.

Duryodhana watched with forced disinterest as his cousins scrambled around the junker that they had been given, loading supplies, trying desperately to finish a safety inspection, and doing it all without any help from any of the crowd of gawkers gathering to watch.

Duryodhana tried not to smirk as he watched Yudhisthira ineffectively giving orders, Bhima doing the heavy lifting like a common laborer, Nakula pointedly ignoring everything that Yudhisthira told him to do, Sahadeva following suit, and Draupadi doing her best to keep track of everything on the electronic notebook that she was nervously clutching to her chest. All of them were trying to pretend as though they weren't being stared at.

Suddenly Arjuna and someone unfamiliar jumped down from the boarding ramp and onto the bay floor. Duryodhana tried not to laugh at the sight. Clearly his cousins had finally found a pilot stupid enough to join them in their exile – and a lowborn commoner by the looks of things.

Now the last of the supplies were loaded, and the cargo ramp was raised. Beneath the looming spaceship, seven small figures gathered together and turned toward the crowd at the edge of the bay. Yudhisthira stepped forward, and began walking toward them, followed by the rest of his family and their pilot. This was it.

Duryodhana turned toward Ashwatthama. "You have it?"

"Yes."

"Then go."

Ashwatthama took Kunti's hand from Vidura, and began to lead her across the bay floor toward Yudhisthira. Ashwatthama had one last task to do, and Kunti had her last farewells to say.

* * *

VIII.

Yudhisthira took Kunti's hands from Ashwatthama. "Mother," he said. Then he choked up, momentarily unable to say anything else. Finally he said, in a breathy, trembling whisper, "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." She touched his cheek. "You can't afford to feel sorry right now." She looked at him with her steely gaze, not a hint of sadness in her eyes. "Yudhisthira, listen to me. I've lost your father. I've lost your mother Madri. But I _haven't _lost you. Not any of you. You're all coming back to me, aren't you?"

Yudhisthira nodded, and Kunti pulled him into a tight embrace. "My sons are strong. They'll survive." She then embraced Bhima and Arjuna in turn. She hesitated a moment before putting her arms around Nakula, but only for a moment. "You'll keep your brothers from doing anything too foolish, won't you?"

"I make no promises," Nakula said.

Kunti embraced Sahadeva, and then Draupadi. "I'm sorry," she said as she held Draupadi in her arms. "I'm so sorry that your father couldn't be here. He wanted so badly to say his farewells to you."

"I know," Draupadi said in a quiet voice. But there was nothing that any of them could have done about that. Drupada had insisted that the launch be delayed for a day so that he could make the jump from Panchala in order to personally say farewell to his daughter; but Duryodhana had refused.

Finally Kunti withdrew her embrace, then paused to give a look-over to the commoner who was going to join her sons in their exile. She squinted at him. "And you are…?"

He bowed low to her. "I am Krishna, Your Highness. Brother of Balarama."

Kunti tapped her lip thoughtfully. "I had heard Balarama had a brother, but have never met any such person. And yet… You seem somehow familiar…"

Krishna straightened up out of his bow hastily. "My brother and I look very much alike, or so I am often told," he said quickly. A bit too quickly.

Yudhisthira raised an eyebrow when he heard this, but said nothing.

Sensing that the farewells were finished, Ashwatthama stepped forward. "Are you ready?" he asked.

"Wait. There is one more thing." Yudhisthira touched Arjuna's shoulder. "Go ahead."

Arjuna nodded. And then there were a pair of arrows in his hands. Old-fashioned ones, wooden, with feather fletches and stone tips. Not the modern arrows made of synthetic materials that he sometimes materialized, and not the ones that flashed like lightning or flowed like rain, either. Arjuna snapped off the tips of both arrows, then dropped one in his mother's hands, and gave the other to Ashwatthama. "It's not much," he said. "Because we don't have anything else to give you right now. But… It's something to remember us by."

Ashwatthama clutched the arrowhead in his hands. "I can't accept this," he said. "It's a piece of your _heart._"

"I know. That's why I gave it to you." The remains of Arjuna's broken arrows vanished in his hands; then he leaned forward and embraced Ashwatthama. "I have more where that came from, you know. I'll be fine."

"Then I'll keep this," Ashwatthama said, returning Arjuna's embrace even as he clutched the arrowhead in one hand, "if only to give it back to you when you return."

Arjuna kissed Ashwatthama's cheek, then pulled out of the embrace and turned toward his mother. She was cupping the arrowhead in her hands. "It feels warm," she said. "But wet. Like rain." She clutched it to her chest. "Thank you. I'll keep it with me always. Until you come back to me, that is."

Arjuna nodded, satisfied with this. Then he stepped back; his role was finished. Yudhisthira stepped forward. "Now," he said to Ashwatthama. "We're ready now."

Ashwatthama concealed his arrowhead somewhere within his official robes, then took a deep breath. It was obvious from the pained expression on his face that he would have given anything to _not _be the one forced to do what he was about to do, but he was of course unable to disobey Duryodhana's orders. He pulled a ring – a flat grey stone set in a silver band – out of his robes.

Yudhisthira held out his hand. "Well, hurry up," he said.

Ashwatthama looked to Arjuna, to Kunti, and back to Yudhisthira. "I've cursed this ring," he said, "with the full extent of my spiritual powers. That's, um, that's a lot," he added a bit sheepishly. Then he continued, "This is the symbol of Yudhisthira's oath to His Majesty. The conditions of the oath are as follows: Yudhisthira must travel to the Yama Quadrant and stay within the bounds of that space for thirteen years. During this time, contact between Yudhisthira and any friend or relative known to him before the start of his exile is forbidden. Yudhisthira must work and live as a commoner to fulfill his own survival needs. Yudhisthira may not stay on any one planet for a period longer than six months as calculated by Kuru's standard. At the start of the thirteenth year, Yudhisthira is permitted to adopt a disguise and conceal his identity, in order to avoid detection by His Majesty's seekers. If Yudhisthira is found during the thirteenth year, his exile will begin anew. This oath applies not only to Yudhisthira but to his six companions. If at any point this oath is broken, His Majesty will know. His Majesty wears the ring that matches this one. If the oath breaks, the rings will break." He placed the ring on Yudhisthira's finger. "Thus you accept this oath." Then he added, in a much smaller and less official-sounding voice, "You don't have to wear it all the time. Just keep it with you in your ship. I cursed it good and strong for you."

Yudhisthira, amazingly, was able to chuckle quietly at this. "That's very thoughtful of you."

"Just trying to help."

"Ashwatthama has a lot of mysterious powers," Arjuna said cheerfully. Then he reached for his brother's hand. "Can I keep the ring?" he asked. "If it's full of Ashwatthama's spiritual powers, then it will be like always having a bit of him with me."

Ashwatthama blushed at this, but Yudhisthira promptly removed the ring from his hand and handed it to Arjuna. "No harm in that," he said. "It doesn't matter who has the ring, since the oath binds us all equally."

"Thank you!" Arjuna said, sounding far too cheerful considering the circumstances.

Then there was a moment of awkward silence. "Well," Yudhisthira said.

"Well," Kunti echoed.

"This is, ah… I guess this is goodbye," Yudhisthira said. They had finished all of their business and could no longer delay the inevitable.

"_Wait,_" Draupadi suddenly said. "There's still one more thing." She pointed at the spaceship looming behind them. "It still needs a name." She turned toward Kunti. "Will you do the honors?"

Kunti eyed the ship thoughtfully. Then she said, "_Duryona_." She smiled. "It means 'home.'"

Nakula rolled his eyes. "That's depressing."

"But true."

"It's a good name," Draupadi said. "A good name."

* * *

IX.

They did not embrace again, because they had already finished their embraces. When it was time to part, Ashwatthama merely walked Kunti back toward the rest of the silently watching crowd.

On board the _Duryona, _things were oddly terse and quiet, despite the fact that there should have been a million things to worry about pre-launch. Nakula sequestered himself in the engine room with a stack of safety manuals – the old-fashioned kind, printed on paper – and fifteen minutes later emerged with the proclamation, "I _think_ I've figured out the engine mechanism – it's absolute shit – and I think I finished all the steps of the pre-launch check. I think. It's hard to tell, because, you know, our engine is absolute shit. We have enough fuel to jump us to the Gajapati system. But no farther."

Nakula was the last person to take his place on the bridge. Except that he didn't really take a place, he just sort of stood around, as they were all doing. There were places to sit on the bridge, but the only one already sitting down was Krishna, secure at his station at the helm. He was poking at the buttons at his station in between cursory glances at the electronic manual scrolling on the screen in front of him. "Wow, there sure are a lot of buttons!" he exclaimed cheerfully.

Yudhisthira was giving him a mildly horrified look. "Are you sure that you know what you're doing?"

"Pretty sure. I've figured out how to prime the engines, launch, steer, and make a jump. And I mean, I don't even have to do any _steering _at all, I just tell the computer where to go and it gets us there." Krishna gave Yudhisthira a thumbs-up signal. "We're good!" Then he tapped a button, and pulled up another screen. "So let's go. Who's going to walk us through the launch sequence?" When a confused silence greeted this question, he turned again toward Yudhisthira and said pointedly, "That's normally the captain's job."

Yudhisthira sighed. "So I'm the captain, now?"

"If you can't be a king you might as well be a captain," Bhima pointed out.

"Oh, _hells_ no," Nakula said. "I'll mutiny. I swear I will."

"Can your mutiny wait," Yudhisthira said wearily, "until after we've made our first jump, at least?"

"Yeah, sure. Whatever."

"Right." Yudhisthira glanced around the unfamiliar bridge. "I guess, ah, this is the captain's chair?" he said, placing his hand on the appropriate seat. Yudhisthira turned toward Bhima and Draupadi, who had each had more experience on board spaceships – or at least military spaceships – than he had. "Right?"

"Right." Draupadi nodded, then smoothly slipped into her military mode. "What are we looking at, here? Four bridge positions?"

Bhima answered her. "Three, actually. Environmental and engineering together at one station. The helm also handles navigation. The first mate's seat has the communication controls."

Draupadi rubbed her forehead, as if staving off a headache. "Please tell me that we have a weapons station."

"No. We don't have any weapons. This is a class of transport ship that was decommissioned _decades _ago."

"Great." Draupadi tapped her foot impatiently. "We at least have defensive _shields, _right?"

Krishna pointed to a mass of buttons at his station. "I think these are shields."

"You think?"

"I'm still not done reading the operator's manual."

"Great," Draupadi repeated. But she pushed gamely ahead anyway. "Nakula, you were in the engine room for a moment ago, so do you think you can take the engineering station?"

"I can, but Sahadeva has to help me. It'll take two of us to keep that thing from blowing once we engage the jump drive. I mean, this ship is _old."_

"We noticed." Draupadi frowned. "Anyway, there's only one seat at the engineering station, so for now you can, I don't know, arm wrestle Sahadeva for it or something."

"Let him take it," Sahadeva said, stepping down to the row of extra seats a step below the bridge stations. "I'll sit down here with Arjuna."

"Wait wait wait," Arjuna protested. "Who said that I was sitting down there? Don't I get a bridge position?"

Bhima, Draupadi, and Nakula laughed at that. Krishna gave Arjuna a sympathetic look, but said nothing. Yudhisthira coughed.

"Fine," Arjuna said, stepping off the command level and down to the row of seats immediately below. "I'm _fine_ down here."

Draupadi ignored this childish outburst. "Bhima, do you want to take the first mate's seat, or give it to me?"

"How about I arm-wrestle you for it?"

"Ha ha, very funny." She paused, and thought about the problem for a moment, pondering it seriously. Then she said, "We'll decide on a chain of command later. But for the time being, I'll take the first mate's position."

"I'd like to point out," Bhima said, "that I have more familiarity with Kuru technology – even obsolete Kuru technology – than you do."

"And I'd like to remind you that once upon a time I successfully invaded and all but conquered your pathetic little planet and I _think _that makes me slightly more qualified to take a leadership position here than you. Also," Draupadi added, "The eldest brother's first wife has authority over the second brother. So there."

Bhima laughed heartily. "I love it when you remind me of exactly why I love you." He leaned forward and kissed her. "Don't ever change."

"I don't intend to." She leaned forward to kiss Bhima lightly on the cheek, the quickly whispered into his ear, "Sit down there for now and take care of Arjuna."

Bhima nodded, then stepped down to take his seat beside Arjuna. Satisfied with the arrangement of the bridge, Draupadi took her seat at the first mate's station. "Right. So. Are we ready to run through the pre-launch checklist?" She turned her head slightly to give Yudhisthira a pointed look. "Captain?"

Yudhisthira frowned. "I'd rather that you didn't call me that."

Draupadi turned away from him, and said nothing. Her scalp was still sore from when Dusshasana had pulled her hair. She still didn't feel as though Yudhisthira quite deserved for her to be addressing him by name again, at least not yet. She could still feel her love for him, burning together with the anger in her heart. She knew on an intellectual level which of those emotions would win out as time passed. But she also knew that she needed time to let her anger burn hot and bright. Her anger was sustaining her at the moment. Her anger was what was helping her confidently organize the bridge and order around her husbands, instead of buckling under the crushing weight of her humiliation, her grief at being separated from her father and brothers without even getting a chance to say her farewells, her worry about how Dhristadyumna would pull himself together without her, her fear about heading into the Yama Quadrant with only an unqualified pilot and her inexperienced husbands in the engine room and very little standing between her and the bleak promise of death. Draupadi took a deep, shuddering breath, and let her anger burn brighter in her heart. Yes, she _definitely _needed the heat of her anger at that moment. She could face her grief later, on her own terms. For the moment, her husbands – and especially Yudhisthira – needed her to remain strong, calm, and focused.

Yudhisthira, who was currently lacking for both dignity and confidence but at _least _still had his sharp intellect to fall back on, wasted very little time fiddling with the controls on the captain's chair before he pulled up the electronic screen that he needed: a scrolling pre-flight checklist. "Fine. Here we go. Uh. Hull openings sealed? What does that mean?"

"Whether the bay doors are closed or not," Bhima provided helpfully from the lower level of seats.

"…Right. So are the bay doors closed?" There was silence. "Who's supposed to answer that?"

"I think I am. Wait. Still trying to figure this out," Krishna said helpfully, flipping through the options on his electronic screen. "Here it is!" An image of the ship, with bay doors and boarding ramps highlighted in green, appeared on his screen. "They're closed."

Yudhisthira moved on to the next item. "Fuel levels?"

"Full," Nakula replied promptly. He had already mastered the controls of his station as if it had been one of his childhood electronic toys. "And sufficient to jump within acceptable distance of Gajapati."

Yudhisthira read through the rest of the checklist. Nakula and Krishna continued to answer him. Draupadi could hear his voice faltering over some of the more unfamiliar terms. She could all too easily imagine Yudhisthira mentally kicking himself for delegating all tasks related to Kuru's spacefaring fleet to Bhima over the years and _never _learning about the technology for his own purposes. But he was learning now, and learning fast.

"Canopy uncovered?" Yudhisthira finally asked.

Krishna pushed a button, and the shutters that covered the transparent dome of the bridge pulled apart. "Uncovered," he said. Kuru's sky shimmered a pale blue above them.

Yudhisthira looked up at the sky for a long moment, then turned to Nakula. "Right, then. Start the engines."

* * *

X.

The engine was rumbling to life beneath them. Arjuna could feel it vibrating deep in his bones. He glanced around at the clear canopy now surrounding him, but it only gave him a view of what was above and in front of the ship, not below. So he settled down into his seat, closed his eyes, and stilled his thoughts, trying to expand his mind's eyes the way that Mr. Drona had taught him how to.

And then he saw them, standing in a crowd a distance from the launch floor, looking up at the rumbling ship with sorrow-lined faces. Arjuna saw his mother, holding back her tears, gazing with defiant, shimmering eyes up at the bridge of the ship. Arjuna saw Vidura holding his mother's shoulders, his head bowed. Arjuna saw Kripi and Mr. Drona holding each other too, as they watched the ship lifting off. Arjuna saw Ashwatthama, his hand closed around the arrowhead that Arjuna had given him, clutching it to his chest. And when Arjuna saw Ashwatthama's face, that was it, his heart broke, and his vision evaporated as his consciousness returned to his body seated inside the ship. He blinked tears from his eyes, and felt his cheeks flushing with anger, shame, and sadness. He had wanted to see more. He had wanted to see Grandpa Bhisma's face one last time, to burn it into his memory as he had the others. But it was no use. Arjuna was suddenly too overwhelmed with his own emotions; there was no way he could get his senses back under control again.

Bhima reached out and touched Arjuna's hand. He was pointedly looking away from Arjuna, sparing Arjuna the indignity of having his tears seen. Arjuna was grateful for that, but also instantly ashamed. Strong, he told himself. He had to be strong. Crying was for women. And Draupadi wasn't even crying. The tears in Arjuna's eyes were shameful.

Krishna shouted something from the bridge, but Arjuna couldn't hear over the sudden roar of the engines. Then the ship lurched. Arjuna felt the sudden adrenaline rush in his blood, instinctively preparing himself for danger. But Bhima leaned over and shouted, "_That was the landing gear retracting. We're hovering now._"

"_What?"_

"_I said we're hovering now!"_

Arjuna's ear drums were pounding. "_Is it supposed to be this loud?!_"

Bhima laughed. At least his laugh was loud enough to be heard over the roar of the engines.

Another lurch, and Arjuna's stomach dropped. They were lifting off.

Arjuna felt their ascent, hard and fast. Almost too fast. His thoughts were racing. _This is it, _he thought, as the truth finally lodged into his brain. _We're leaving Kuru. We're really leaving Kuru._

The engines began to quiet down as the _Duryona_'s launch momentum propelled it upward. "One click above sea level," Arjuna could now hear Krishna reporting from the bridge. "One point five. Two."

Arjuna turned toward Sahadeva, who was looking up through the canopy of the bridge, at the blue sky above them. "It never gets any closer," Sahadeva said, "until all of a sudden it's gone." The sky was beginning to darken already.

Arjuna closed his eyes, trying to empty his thoughts. When he opened his eyes again, thousands of stars were gleaming in the pitch blackness that had enveloped the bridge canopy.

Arjuna's heart sank at the sight. It was not something that he had never seen before. But it was going to be his last glimpse of Kuru's stars for a long time.

"Cruise program initiated," Krishna reported. "The computer will guide us to the jump point."

"How long do we have until jump?" Yudhisthira asked.

"Twenty-four hours until we've escaped the system's gravity," Nakula said. Arjuna could hear him unbuckling himself already, standing up from his seat. "From the back observation deck we'll have a view of Kuru for the next several hours." Then he added, in a quiet voice, "Best to enjoy it now."

* * *

XI.

Kuru was more blue than it was any other color. Draupadi had to squint to see any visible landmass. At present, the Eastern hemisphere, which held the gleaming jewel of Hastinapura in its bosom, was turned toward them. In the dark distance, Kuru's sun gleamed, still too bright to look at. But the light of the sun was rapidly fading. The swirling gaseous bulk of Kuru Five was already looming in the area visible from the observation deck.

Bhima slipped his hand around Draupadi's waist. She leaned against him, gratefully, but said nothing.

There were no seats on the tiny observation deck. Just a small ledge to stand on, and a clear canopy. The "deck" was little more than a last-minute addition that some thoughtful architect had grafted onto the rear of the ship. But it was long enough, at least, to be shared by several people. And so the five brothers and their wife stood silently, watching until their home faded from view, swallowed by the dark emptiness of space.

The rings of Kuru Six finally drifted into view. By then Draupadi had had enough. Kuru, her home, was no longer visible. She pulled away from Bhima, turned, and stepped off the observation deck. Somebody had to break the inertia, after all, and it might as well be her.

"Yudhisthira," she said.

He turned toward her immediately, barely masking his surprise at hearing her finally address him by name. "Yes?"

"Come with me," she said. "We have work to do."

_Thirteen years of work,_ she thought, taking his hand. _And a kingdom to win back. _She glanced up at him, at his lined face, the few gray hairs that he had forgotten to pluck that morning, the deep furrows in his brow. _I don't want to do this to you,_ she suddenly thought. _I don't want to be the one who makes you into the king that you need to be. I don't know if I can be that cruel._

But then he bowed his head to her, and gently kissed her hand. "My Queen," he said. "Forever."

And Draupadi realized that he had just made her a promise.

Kuru was gone. But her husbands were still there, gathered around her, watching her, waiting for her to speak.

"Well," she said, "Let's get started."

* * *

To be continued.


	25. Exile 01: Reunion

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

EXILE 01: REUNION

* * *

Jumpspace was cold.

"So that's the problem," Nakula said, throwing up his hands in frustration. "The whole heating system is

gunked. I could fix it, but we don't have the necessary amount of insulation."

"So what are our options?" Yudhisthira asked, watching his breath puff out.

"The important thing is to keep a minimal amount of heat in _every _part of the ship, and I'm talking 'minimal' as in 'barely fit for human habitation.' There are portable gas stoves in the storage hold, with the other outdoor camping equipment. I vote we haul those up here and choose a few rooms to keep really warm."

"Can one of those places be the bathroom?" Arjuna asked, shivering. He had just attempted to take a shower in the freezing-cold bathing room; currently, his wet hair was giving him chills.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever. Arjuna, come with me down to the storage bay. And for the love of the Lord, dry your hair."

"I can't. I tried to plug in the hair dryer and it shorted out a bunch of lights." Arjuna shivered again. "By the way, do we have any more, uh, lightubes? Like the long ones, in the bathing room?"

Nakula sighed. "Not many."

It didn't take long for Nakula and Arjuna to find the gas stoves out of the storage area in the belly of the ship. The _Duyona _had been in jumpspace for less than two days, and already things were starting to go wrong. As if adjusting to life aboard the tiny transport cruiser hadn't been difficult enough. There was a rhythm to this sort of life, but Arjuna and his brothers were still stumbling around and trying to find it. The first two days had been a confusing whirlwind, trying to divvy up space, time, and responsibilities on board the ship; who would sleep in what room, who would have access to the precious bathrooms and showers and when, and who would take care of cooking, cleaning, and maintenance. The cooking did not even get done, not really: occasionally some of them would drift into the small kitchen/dining area, heat up an instant meal, listen to Nakula complain about the engine if they were unlucky enough to be in the kitchen when he was, and then leave.

The first two days, then, had been mostly cleaning and chores. They were still trying to find all of the ship's cleaning supplies, still trying to properly store the food and medicine that they had brought on board, still sorting through the paltry amounts of clothing that had been left in the ship for them to use. They were also trying to figure out where to sleep. The _Duryona_ had four shared quarters for eight crew members, and two larger rooms meant for two officers. There were seven people currently aboard the ship. Currently Nakula and Sahadeva were volunteering to share a room, although everybody understood that this was a temporary arrangement. The unspoken thought among the five brothers was that their pilot, being a lowborn commoner, should not have the privilege of his own room. Unfortunately, that still meant that one of _them _would have to share with him.

"Here we are," Nakula said, having finally succeeded in excavating a small gas-powered stove from beneath a pile of old sleeping bags, a molding tent, and various other equipment intended for camping on uninhabited but terraformed planets. "Ugh, it's rusted." There were dark circles underneath Nakula's eyes. Since the _Duryona_ had jumped yesterday, Nakula had spent most of his time in the engine room, kicking and cursing at the engine whenever it threatened to shut down and lurch them out of jumpspace. This had happened three times already.

"You know what? I've got it," Arjuna said quickly, reaching to take the heavy stove from Nakula. "Why don't you, uh, go take a nap or something."

Nakula blinked at Arjuna for a moment, considering this. Then he said, "Wake me up right away the minute that the engine starts acting up."

"…All right."

"You have no idea how to _tell _if there's anything wrong with the engine, do you?"

Arjuna scratched his head. "Well… I'll know if we kick out of jumpspace!" he said, trying to crack a joke.

Nakula glared at him flatly. "Don't even joke about that. If we kick out of jumpspace too early, and if the engine is too mucked to jump again, we'll _die_ out here. The likelihood of a passing ship picking up our distress signal is less than zero point zero zero zero zero two percent. Understand?"

Arjuna felt a strange, sinking sensation in his stomach. "Oh."

"So I can't let the engine get to that point, where we might kick out of jumpspace. I can't risk it."

"Oh."

"And if we kick out of jumpspace and if it takes us three years to reach a planetary system using auxiliary power and if we have to resort to cannibalism to survive, _you're_ going to be first on the list for eating. Got it?"

Now it was Arjuna's turn to stare at Nakula. "What?"

"Because you're useless. You'd be serving us better as food right now."

Arjuna was still aghast. "You've _thought_ about this?!"

"I think about a lot of things. Come on, make yourself useful and carry that stove to the lounge."

The lounge that Nakula was referring to was a small room that actually doubled as the kitchen and dining area. There was kitchen equipment in the back of the room, and the front portion of the room was taken up with tables, chairs, a long couch that had seen better days, and a small media console that was already showing signs of unreliability as it attempted to capture broadcast waves in subspace. The "lounge" was, by any measure, a gloomy, cramped space; made all the more so by its bareness. There was a complete absence of anything in the way of decoration, not even so much as a poster on a wall or a plant in a corner.

Today the lounge was imbued with an even gloomier atmosphere than usual, due mostly to the presence of Yudhisthira sitting at one table and half-heartedly nursing a cup of tea, staring morosely off into space, infecting the room with the particular air of despairing helplessness that he had been emitting ever since the day of the dice game. But at least Yudhisthira wasn't alone in the room. Sahadeva was curled up on the musty-smelling couch, dozing with a printed copy of one section of the ship's massive operating manual in his arms. And Bhima was standing in the back of the room, among the kitchen equipment, boiling water. At first Arjuna was surprised to see his enormous brother doing something as simply domestic as working in the kitchen, but then he realized that Bhima was boiling water for Yudhisthira's tea, and that made sense. There was no other reason – no other _person – _for whom Bhima would do such a thing.

Yudhisthira looked up at Arjuna when he entered the room. "Is that the stove?" he asked. Even by Yudhisthira standards, it was a stupid question. But Arjuna figured that he probably didn't have anything else to say.

Arjuna set down the stove in the center of the room, unscrewed the tank access cap, and stepped aside to allow Nakula to start pouring gas into it. "We have enough liquid gas to burn three stoves all day every day until we reach Gajapati," Nakula said. "So at least three rooms will be warm."

Arjuna ignored Nakula and Yudhisthira, and stepped over toward Bhima. "Can I help?" he asked.

"I've got it."

"I'm not useless, you know," Arjuna suddenly blurted out, bristling.

Bhima turned toward him, startled. "I didn't say you were. But it doesn't take two people to make tea, Arjuna."

"Nakula said that if we kicked out of jumspace and were stuck traveling with auxiliary power and we had to resort to cannibalism to survive then I would be the first to be eaten--!" Arjuna cut himself off abruptly when Bhima laughed, and flushed as he realized how whiny and childish he sounded.

Yudhisthira looked up at Arjuna again. "That won't happen," he said. "And besides, if we did resort to cannibalism, it would only make sense to eat Bhima first."

Bhima stopped laughing abruptly. But then Arjuna laughed at the look on Bhima's face.

Yudhisthira sipped his tea calmly. "Alive, Bhima consumes the most food. Dead, he would provide the most food. Simple equation."

Bhima snorted, deciding to play along. "Arjuna would taste better, though."

"I would _not_--!" Arjuna paused, suddenly unsure if Bhima had insulted him, or if Bhima had complimented him and tricked him into insulting himself. Stupid Bhima. Fortunately, at that moment, Krishna stepped into the lounge, and Arjuna whirled immediately toward him. "Krishna! Do I taste better than Bhima?!"

Krishna paused in mid-step. "Oh my," he said. "I wouldn't know. That's really the sort of question that you should be asking Draupadi, not me."

There was a moment of silence that greeted this statement. Yudhisthira's jaw dropped, and he managed, even in the midst of his depression, to look perfectly appalled. But Nakula, however, threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Score one for the pilot!" he crowed.

Yudhisthira closed his mouth, pursing his lips. He glared at Krishna. "It is not proper for you to show such disrespect for your employers," he sniffed, finally managing to be at least a little bit haughty again.

" 'Employers'? But you're not paying me anything," Krishna said cheerfully. He sat down across from Yudhisthira, then turned toward Bhima. "Some tea would be nice," he said casually.

Yudhisthira's jaw dropped again. But Nakula said sharply, "Oh, get that stick out of your ass. We're _all _commoners now, remember? I'm not a prince and you're not a king, and there's no reason for you to demand that our pilot treat you as one."

"Oh no, that's not it at all," Krishna said quickly. "Yudhisthira is still a king. Nothing that your cousins can do could ever change that."

Yudhisthira frowned at him. "Then why do you, a commoner, insist on treating my brothers and I as if you were our equal?"

"Because I'm--"

"Oh good," Draupadi said, stepping into the lounge and interrupting Krishna, "You're all here." She shook Sahadeva's shoulder, waking him up. "We need to have a talk."

Sahadeva clutched the operator's manual more tightly to his chest, mumbled something, and rolled over on his side. But he did not wake up. Ignoring him, Draupadi sat down beside Yudhisthira. "We need to make a plan for Gajapati. And we need to figure out the sleeping arrangements. And, for the love of the Lord, _somebody _has to cook a decent meal at some point. Where's the console remote?"

Yudhisthira stared at her.

"Remote," Nakula said, handing it to Draupadi.

She twirled the remote in her hands for a moment, then switched on the small console mounted on the wall across from the couch. The image on the console screen was jumpy and the colors were off, but the face of a newsreader from Panchala was clearly visible. "This thing picks up news channels from Kuru, Panchala, Madra, and twelve other systems. It also," she said, flipping to a new channel, "picks up this broadcast from Gajapati. At three hundred Universal time there's a children's program where some guy in a giant elephant suit teaches how to speak basic Ganjam. I think we should all make it a point to start studying Ganjam, and as Arjuna's dictionary discs aren't very helpful for useful language study and our diginet connection is shot--"

"I'm _working _on it," Nakula interjected.

"I know. I know you are. But right now, this is our only and best option."

"Can we watch the news from Kuru?" Arjuna asked.

Draupadi seemed taken aback by the question. "Well, yes, but…" She looked at Yudhisthira, who was staring intently down at his teacup, and then back to Arjuna. Draupadi shook her head. "Maybe later," she said.

"No," Yudhisthira suddenly said. "No, it's all right." But while he spoke he still would not look at Draupadi. Even as he spoke, he was still staring at his teacup. "Arjuna, you can watch whatever you want. Don't… Don't _not _watch something just because I'm in the room."

Silence greeted this. Arjuna actually had to look away from his brother, mildly disgusted by Yudhisthira's pathetic demeanor, his hunched shoulders, the submissive lowering of his head, and the empty fatalism in his voice.

Suddenly Draupadi reached out and grasped Yudhisthira's hand. "Come with me," she said, standing up quickly and pulling Yudhisthira with her. "Now. We have to talk."

Yudhisthira did not protest as Draupadi dragged him out of the lounge.

And then, again, there was silence.

Finally Bhima broke the silence. "Tea is ready," he informed Krishna, although he of course did not stoop to serve the commoner himself.

Krishna stood up and helped himself to the tea, while Bhima sat down beside Arjuna. The flimsy lounge chair groaned under Bhima's weight. "We have a long time before we reach Gajapati," he said.

"Yeah," Arjuna agreed.

"And nothing to do until then."

"…Yeah."

Bhima paused for a moment, then said, "There are weapons in the storage area."

Arjuna perked up instantly. "Really?"

"They're not very well-maintained, but useful for practice, I guess."

"Good. Good!" Arjuna leaned forward eagerly. "I have to do something, you know, _something_, or else I'll get fat--"

Bhima threw back his head and laughed, a rumbling roar that seemed to shake the very bulkheads of the _Duryona _itself. "You?!" He encircled one of Arjuna's arms with his enormous thumb and forefinger. "You're as thin as a twig!"

Arjuna bristled. He wasn't thin, actually. His thick upper arms rippled with solid muscle, built up from years of athletic training and practice with Gandiva. But to Bhima, of course, any human who weighed less than an elephant was by default 'thin'. "I'm not a _twig_," Arjuna said. "I could take _you_ in a fight."

Bhima laughed again. "Go ahead and try!"

"I'd like to see Arjuna try too," Krishna said, earnestly, without a hint of irony or sarcasm in his voice. He had poured himself tea and was now sitting across from Bhima and Arjuna, in the seat that Yudhisthira had vacated a few moments earlier. "A lightweight skilled in martial arts can easily take down a heavier opponent."

"So even I could take down Bhima," Nakula mused. He was sitting on the floor in front of the couch where Sahadeva was sleeping, idly flipping through console channels with the remote in his hand. "Good to know. I'm still planning that mutiny, you know."

Krishna ignored this, and turned to Arjuna. "You do know your asanas, don't you?"

Arjuna stared at him.

"Movements. Forms," Bhima said. "For the sword."

Arjuna stills stared.

"For a 'Great Warrior,' Arjuna, you aren't very versatile," Bhima sighed.

"Don't tell me that you never learned any weapon beyond your bow!" Krishna suddenly wailed, apparently greatly distressed. "Didn't your guru teach you _anything_?!"

Arjuna bristled again, this time at the implied insult against Mr. Drona. "I learned lots of yogic techniques," he said, miffed. But it was true that he had never seriously studied any weapons or martial arts beyond his bow. The reason was that, as the host of a devaweapon, it had taken every ounce of Arjuna's strength and concentration to learn to master Gandiva without it taking over and killing him instead. Gandiva was a powerful force, sometimes a force which he could barely contain; it was only his physical strength and skill as an archer that kept Arjuna in control of the bow, instead of the other way around.

"My cute little baby brother," Bhima said, reaching out to pinch Arjuna's cheek. "I'll make you a deal, all right? Before we reach Gajapati, I am going to teach you how to kick my ass."

"And in return?" Arjuna asked, sensing where this was going.

"You're also going to read – and memorize – the ship's operator's manual. Cover to cover. And you're going to learn how to take over some of the first mate's duties for me."

Arjuna was taken aback. That hardly seemed like a price to pay – in fact, it was the reward that he had been waiting for. He wanted to step up and take his place beside his two older brothers. He wanted to be useful on board the _Duryona_. Most of all, he wanted to make a contribution that he could rub in Nakula's face the next time that Nakula joked about cannibalism. But Arjuna forced himself to contain his excitement, and to maintain his adult composure. He nodded grimly. "I agree."

"Then it's settled," Bhima said, standing up. "Nakula. Wake up Sahadeva. You two are training too."

Nakula stared at Bhima. "What?"

"I said, you're training with Arjuna too."

"But I have to--" Suddenly the _Duryona _shuddered, and the utensils in the kitchen rattled alarmingly as the engine rumbled and vibrated beneath them. "Ihavetowatchtheengine," Nakula said quickly, jumping up and running out of the room as fast as he could.

Arjuna watched him go, then turned inquisitively toward Bhima.

"Oh, he got away this time," Bhima said. "But there will be other times. And besides," Bhima said, eyeing the still-sleeping Sahadeva curled up on the couch, "he left behind his partner in crime."

* * *

II.

It was bitterly cold in Draupadi's quarters.

No, not _quarters_, Yudhisthira decided, as he followed Draupdi inside. It was merely a _room_. There was a bed piled high with a generous portion of the extra blankets that Bhima had dug out of storage, a closet that was closed but that Yudhisthira knew was mostly empty, a shelf, and a mirror. The shelf was crammed with objects that Draupadi had salvaged from the _Duryona'_s old stores: a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and several suspiciously ancient items of makeup, in clear cases, none of which matched Draupadi's nearly-ebony skin tone.

Draupadi sat down on the bed, and gestured for Yudhisthira to join her. She was wearing work pants and an unflatteringly ugly sweater, hand-me-down clothes from the previous crew. Her face was unmade, her hair flowing loose around her shoulders. Even though they were several days into their exile, Yudhisthira was still not yet used to seeing his wife without her makeup or jewelry, at least not in any context other than when she was not also unclothed and lying beside him in his bed.

"Your hands are shaking," she said, as she grasped them in hers.

"I know. I'm sorry." He looked away from her. "There are no smokerolls aboard the ship anywhere," he said by way of explanation. And he knew, because he had searched for them himself. Oh, how he had searched – nearly tearing apart the ship from top to bottom. But no luck.

"Oh," Draupadi said. Then she added, "Well, it was a nasty habit anyway. It made your breath smell terrible." Despite her cold words, however, there was a deep sympathy in her voice. She let go of Yudhisthira's hands, but then gently wrapped her arms around his shoulders, drawing him close to her.

Yudhisthira trembled with hesitation, then surrendered to her embrace, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his head on her shoulder. It was the first time that she had touched him since the dice game. "Draupadi," he whispered, murmuring her own name into her neck.

She held him tightly to her. "This is the part where we make up, I guess," she said. "We have to. We're the heads of this family. _They _need us to be together."

Yudhisthira closed his eyes, afraid to look at her. "You shouldn't forgive me too easily," he said. "I'm weak. I don't deserve--"

"No. No, Yudhisthira, you're not weak. You're strong." Draupadi squeezed him to her body. "You believed in Duryodhana, up until the very last moment, and that _is _a type of strength. It was foolish, but it was also a type of strength. It can be both."

"…I don't understand."

She let go of his shoulders and abruptly pulled out of his embrace. Draupadi stood up off the bed, turned, and faced Yudhisthira, glowering imperiously down at him. "You don't have to understand. Just know this. I will never forget – I will never let _you _forget – that you are a king. And you must never forget that I am a queen."

He looked up at her, and met her eyes with his. "I won't," he promised. "I swear I won't."

"And someday we're going to have our kingdom back."

"I swear, I _swear _I will do that for you."

"No. Not you. _We're_ going to." She tenderly brushed a lock of Yudhisthira's overly-long hair from his forehead. "That's the promise that I want to hear from you."

He nodded solemnly. "Then I promise."

"Thank you." She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

He reached up and took her hand. "You're not… You're not going to ask me to avenge your honor?"

She looked down at him, and there was suddenly a deep sorrow in her eyes. "No," she said, "I'm not. You're not the right husband for that, Yudhisthira. You're too pure for revenge." She looked away from him. "I know that if I asked you to, you would. That is enough for me. But I'm not going to. That's going to be Bhima's role, remember? He already took that oath. You were there, you heard him."

Yudhisthira bit his lip, momentarily afraid to say anything else. He was terrified, in that moment – terrified of the realization of where he stood in relation to Duryodhana and the rest of his family, terrified of the knowledge of what he was going to have to do to get his kingdom back…

_No,_ he thought. _I won't let it come to that._

Then Draupadi was back, sitting beside him on the bed, wrapping her arms around him. "Stop," she said. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You need to accept my forgiveness and move on. We need you to be strong right now."

He pulled her close to him, returning her embrace. Their lips were very close now. "You're my strength," he whispered.

"And you're my conscience, I think," she said with a light laugh.

"Good. That works out well."

Yudhisthira wasn't sure when exactly they started to lean back, or which of them leaned back first. But suddenly they were tumbling backward onto the bed, a joyous tangle of arms and legs, seeking hands and fluttering lips. Draupadi threw back her head and laughed. "So this is the part where we…?"

"Mmm-hmm." Somehow their tumble in the bed had ended with Yudhisthira on his back and Draupadi draped over him, her hips grinding pleasantly down against his. "I think we do," he said, mildly amazed at the fact that he was feeling genuinely aroused for the first time since the dice game. Surely that was a sign that he was getting over the shock of the whole affair, right?

Draupadi bent low over him, her dark hair cascading down around his face. "Make-up sex?"

"Now that you've said it, it sounds so crude." Yudhisthira kissed her again though, hard this time, and rough.

She pulled away from the kiss first. "Wait," she said. "It's the middle of the day. I have no idea what the sound insulation on board this ship is like… What if they hear us…?"

"Uhm," Yudhisthira said, suddenly flushing a deep crimson. "Uhm. Uh, I didn't want to tell you this, but… I think that somebody is more likely to hear us if they're sleeping in the next room than if they're in the lounge on the other side of the ship. And since this is the middle of the day and everybody seems to be gathered in the lounge on the other side of the ship right now, it might be an optimal time to--"

"But _you're_ sleeping in the room next to mine!" Draupadi suddenly exclaimed, her eyes wide with horror. "Oh my gods… Did you hear Sahadeva and me last night?!"

"That was Sahadeva?"

"_Yudhisthira!"_

"I don't know, I was trying NOT to pay too close attention, you know, out of a well-developed sense of decency and moral prudishness."

Draupadi sighed. "Obviously, this living arrangement is going to take some getting used to."

"I think so too."

"And… What was that you were saying about moral prudishness…?" She licked her lips, grinned devilishly at him, and in one smooth motion slid her hand down his pants, closing her fingers around his erect, swollen member. "Oh that's no good, Your Majesty. We're going to have to do something about that."

* * *

III.

Yudhisthira awoke from a hazy doze with a shiver. He glanced around Draupadi's room, but could see no clock within the immediate sweep of his vision. Draupadi, however, rolled up against him, pressing her bare breasts pleasantly against his side. "Sleep well?" she asked.

"Yeah." He reached up and rubbed his eyes. "How long was I…?"

"Just for an hour. I was watching you sleep."

"That's kind of kinky." Then he shivered again. "It's _cold_ in this room."

"I know. Believe me, I know." The two of them, nude and sated, were huddled closely together beneath the many, many blankets that Draupadi had piled on top of her bed. Draupadi's skin was baking off a pleasant heat, as it always did – Yudhisthira suspected that this was a side-effect of her Gift – but it still wasn't enough to prevent the goosebumps that were now spreading across Yudhisthira's skin. He knew that he was going to have to get up and put on some clothes soon. But for the moment, he still didn't want to move. Not yet. He wrapped one arm casually around his wife, and turned his head toward her. "So…" he said. "The pilot."

"Krishna."

"Arjuna said that he'd met him before. The night when he faced the gandharvas." Yudhisthira frowned. "Why didn't he tell us before? He always told me that he was alone that night."

"He always told you?" Draupadi frowned.

"Well, no, not exactly, now that I think about it… He never actually _said _that he was alone, but he just… Hmm. I guess Arjuna just never mentioned that somebody was with him. And a commoner at that. That's a rather large omission, don't you think?"

"Yes. But he didn't outright lie to you." She rested her head against Yudhisthira's shoulder. "I trust Arjuna. I'm sure that he had his reasons."

"I know. I trust Arjuna too. And I trust him when he says that we can trust Krishna. But…" Yudhisthira trailed off, unsure how to phrase what he wanted to say next. Then he remembered all of the years that his younger brother had clung to Duryodhana's side, and he frowned and said, "Arjuna has a history of trusting too easily."

Draupadi laughed. "Should I point out that if _you _hadn't trusted your cousin so easily, we wouldn't be here right now?"

Yudhisthira was instantly chagrined. "All right, all right."

Draupadi snuggled against him warmly, and rested one hand languidly on his chest. "You're right to be worried about Arjuna," she said. "It's your job as a king, as a brother, and as the captain of this ship." She kissed him lightly on the neck. "I'm glad to hear you finally sounding as if you're ready to take on those responsibilities."

"I am."

"Then let's go." She sat up, pulling most of the blankets off both her and Yudhisthira as she did so. Yudhisthira sucked in his breath with a sharp hiss, as the cold air of Draupadi's cabin slapped against his exposed skin. Draupadi stood up off the bed, and held out one hand toward Yudhisthira. "Ready, my king?"

"As ever, my queen," he said, taking her hand, letting her pull him out of the bed and into a standing position beside her. "Let's go take our kingdom back."

Draupadi nodded approvingly. "However," she said, "I feel it prudent to point out that, if we have any hope of anybody else respecting our authority, we should both probably put on some pants."

* * *

IV.

"This is not fair," Sahadeva pointed out as he shivered angrily beneath the spray of cold water. "Why do I have to go last?" He stepped out from beneath the showerhead long enough to lather up his hair.

"Birth order," Bhima said, already dried off and half-dressed. "If there's a limited amount of hot water available for showers, then--"

"But my hair _needs _hot water," Sahadeva protested.

Arjuna suddenly had to bite back a laugh. Sahadeva momentarily sounded so much like his brother Nakula that it was uncanny. Then Arjuna frowned when he realized how his shoulders, trembling with stifled laughter, suddenly screamed in pain. He was sore all over. Bhima's training had been merciless.

"Are you all right?" Bhima suddenly asked, apparently having noticed Arjuna's wince. He had finished dressing and stood up, now looming over Arjuna, who was still sitting on the single bench in the dry area of the shower bay, his towel draped over his lap.

Arjuna glanced up at his brother. "I'm fine. It's just…" He winced as he tried to roll his shoulders back again. "I'm not used to using certain muscles."

Bhima frowned down at him. "Let's not continue with the sword tomorrow, then. Maybe you should start with something cruder." He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Axe? Mace?"

Arjuna shuddered. "When would I ever need to _use _those things?"

"In a life-or-death situation."

"Bhima…" Arjuna trailed off, unsure of what to say to that. Then he turned his head away from Bhima's gaze. He reached for the clothes that he had left piled beside him on the bench, and grabbed the chain with Ashwatthama's ring on it. He slipped the chain around his neck, and relished the feeling of the already-familiar and comforting cool weight of the ring against his chest.

"Are you sure that you should be wearing that?" Bhima suddenly asked. "I mean, it's cursed. And Ashwatthama said that you didn't have to wear it all the time."

"But I like wearing it," Arjuna said simply. The ring on his finger would have been a nuisance if and when he ever got the chance to use Gandiva, but the ring on a chain around his neck worked perfectly fine.

"It's cursed," Bhima repeated, stubbornly. "I don't like you wearing it."

Arjuna rolled his eyes. "Yes, _father_."

"Arjuna, don't--"

"You're being stupid. There's nothing evil about this 'curse.' Ashwatthama's powers are drawn from his self-restraint and righteousness. Oh come on, it's not like I'm going to get cancer or anything from--"

"Ashwatthama works for Duryodhana," Bhima said, sharply, coldly. "Do not forget that."

Arjuna seethed silently. He didn't want to get in a fight with Bhima – not when they had been getting along so well a few moments ago, not when there was already so much anger and hurt driving his family apart, and especially not when Ashwatthama was a mutual point of contention between them. So he swallowed his anger, and said nothing.

Eventually Bhima stepped away from him. "Do as you like," he said. Then he left the shower bay.

Arjuna let out a long, slow sigh. Then he heard the shower spigot finally turn off. He turned his head, and saw Sahadeva, shivering and dripping wet and utterly unselfconscious of his nudity, stepping into the dressing area and reaching for a towel. He toweled off his hair first, either not noticing or not caring about the way that his naked body was dripping water all over the tiled floor.

Arjuna tried not to stare, but couldn't help himself. There were times when his brothers Nakula and Sahadeva definitely looked more deva than human, and this was one of those times. Sahadeva's unearthly pale skin gleamed beneath the harsh buzzing lights mounted in the ceiling of the shower bay; his devakin markings rippled across his back and shoulders as he worked his arms, attacking his hair with the towel in his hands. Suddenly Sahadeva paused, blinked, and turned toward Arjuna, regarding him with his alien golden eyes. "Why are you staring at me?" he asked.

"I was just wondering," Arjuna said. "How you got so good with the sword." And it was true, he really was wondering that. During their training with Bhima, Sahadeva had instantly mastered nearly every move that Bhima had shown him. And he had hardly broken a sweat during the workout, either. Arjuna was baffled.

Sahadeva smiled at him. It was not one of Sahadeva's usual dreamy smiles, but something entirely different. It was a smug smile. Arjuna was slightly taken aback. Sahadeva said simply, "I learn fast." Then he added, "Because I'm a genius." There was not a trace of either vanity or humility in his voice when he said this; it was merely a statement of fact.

Arjuna sighed. "I don't get it." He frowned. "You, okay, fine, I understand, you're a genius so you can pick up the sword right away. But me? I don't understand why I _don't _get it. At all."

"Maybe this is the Lord's will," Sahadeva suddenly said.

"Say what?"

"The Lord's will," Sahadeva said solemnly. "You're Arjuna, the Great Warrior. There _is _no good reason why you should fail so miserably every time you touch a sword. Perhaps, then, this is a divine intervention. The Lord must have a reason to prevent you from using the sword. Or maybe," he said, tapping his chin thoughtfully, "Gandiva is jealous, so it's sabotaging you."

Arjuna raised one eyebrow. "That is the single craziest thing I have heard all day, Sahadeva."

"Mmm." Sahadeva turned away from Arjuna, finished toweling off, and then started dressing. He paused, however, after he had slipped back on his pants, his belt still held in his hands. "Hey, Arjuna?"

"Yes?"

"You're going to put the pilot in my room, aren't you."

"What?"

"I said, you're going to put the pilot in my room." He had turned his unsettling gaze toward Arjuna again. "You heard what Bhima said. Birth order. You made me take the cold shower, so that means that you're going to put Krishna in my room."

For a moment, Arjuna could say nothing, because what Sahadeva had said was true. The current sleeping arrangement, with Nakula and Sahadeva sharing a room and Krishna on his own, was understood by everybody to be a temporary state of affairs. Krishna was a commoner and did not deserve his own room; but the question of which of Arjuna's brothers was going to have to share a room with him had been left up in the air. Or rather, it had already been settled, but unspoken: Sahadeva was the youngest, so Sahadeva would lose out on the privilege of his own room. Everybody understood this, but at the same time, nobody had made a move to finalize the sleeping arrangements thus; perhaps because nobody had wanted to inflict that indignity upon Sahadeva, not yet. They had been delaying the move as long as possible. But it had been several days since their departure already, and it was past time for all of them to settle down in their respective cabins.

Arjuna eyed Sahadeva carefully. "You wouldn't like that?" he asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

Sahadeva said nothing. His face was unreadable.

Finally Arjuna nodded to himself, slowly. Then he said, "All right. I'll tell you what. How about Krishna shares my room?"

Sahadeva glanced up at Arjuna sharply. "Are you serious?"

"Yes."

Sahadeva didn't look too happy to hear the suggestion, though. "I don't know," he said. "I don't like the thought of you and him…" He trailed off, obviously unwilling to finish that thought out loud. Then he shook his head, and forced himself to smile at Arjuna. "Thank you," he said. Arjuna could see exactly how forced that smile was.

"Is there something wrong?" Arjuna asked.

"Mmm. No. Yes. I don't know." Sahadeva turned his attention back toward his belt. "It's just… Bad combinations. Krishna with me or Krishna with you, either way, it's a bad combination. For different reasons, but still a bad combination."

"What does _that _mean!?" Arjuna snapped, defensively. He had his suspicions about Krishna, too. He remembered the night of the gandharvas well, he knew that Krishna was hiding things from him. He still didn't understand why Krishna had told him to not mention his involvement with the gandharvas. But he also knew that he instinctively trusted the somewhat oddball commoner. And Arjuna didn't like having his faith questioned by one of his nosy little brothers.

"It means this," Sahadeva said quietly. "Your name. The one that Father gave you." Sahadeva finished buckling his belt, and reached for his shirt. " 'Arjuna' means 'pure.' Incorruptible. Arjuna right now knows exactly who he is and what he wants to do, and that makes him strong." Sahadeva finally turned his gaze back toward Arjuna. "Don't ever let anybody convince you to do the things that you don't want to do. Don't let anybody make you into their pawn. Don't let anybody change you."

Arjuna sat and stared at Sahadeva silently, unable to say anything in response to this.

* * *

V.

It was quite late in the evening – at least in terms of the artificial time aboard the _Duryona _– when Nakula stormed into the lounge, shirtless, his pale skin flushed and drenched with sweat. "I fixed the engine," he declared, "and now I'm going to take a shower, and when I come back, there had _better _be some dinner on that table," he said, pointing at one of the only two tables in the room. "Understood?"

Draupadi, who was the only person in the lounge at the time, looked up from the book that she had been reading, and blinked at him. "Excuse me?"

"I said, I want some dinner. Weren't you the one who was going on earlier today about how we should get together for a proper meal anyway?"

Draupadi regarded him with half-lidded eyes. "Are you suggesting that I do the cooking?"

"Well… Yes. I mean, we're commoners now, and that's what commoner women do."

She glared at him. "I am not and will never be a commoner." She closed her book. "Also, there's no more hot water left. You should wait for at least half an hour if you don't want to take a cold shower--"

"I can't _wait, _LOOK at me, I'm disgusting!" Nakula pulled at his hair in frustration. "ARGH! I HATE exile! This is even worse than _camping_!" Then, apparently having fulfilled his quota of theatrical declarations for the day, Nakula stomped out of the lounge angrily.

Draupadi tried to open up her book again. It was an old printed romance that she had dug out of the storage areas in the belly of the ship, one of only three books that she and Arjuna had been able to find. And it was wretchedly, mind-numbingly boring so far. She closed the book again, and sighed. Suddenly her stomach growled at her.

Draupadi took that as a sign. She stood up, walked out of the lounge, and wandered around the ship until she found who she was looking for.

"Krishna!" she barked.

The pilot, who had been sitting at his station on the bridge and pouring over a section of the printed copy of the ship's manual, jumped to attention. "Yes?"

"It's time for you to cook our dinner," she said.

He blinked at her. "Excuse me?"

"I said, I want some dinner. I'm going to go round up the others. Do you think you can get something ready in thirty minutes?" Without waiting for his answer, she nodded at him. "Good," she said. Then she left the bridge, off to search of her husbands.

* * *

VI.

Krishna stared at the stove controls. Of course they were written in Oriya. The stove unit had probably been replaced by the crew of the _Duryona _during some long-ago transport run, probably because the original had broken down and they had been forced to replace it with a unit bought on some foreign planet. Of course Oriya was the one language that Krishna had never bothered to study in school. He sighed. Unreadable labels aside, however, Krishna felt smart enough to figure the stove out by himself. The big button turned on the heat. The big dial controlled the level of heat. Simple enough. There were more buttons and more dials, but Krishna couldn't be bothered with them at the moment. He turned his attention toward the rations that he had to work with: Rice, dried lentils, dried pork, yogurt, and some rather unexciting spices. No problem. He could do this.

Krishna was measuring out the rice when he became aware of Bhima's presence looming behind him. "Is that for all of us?" Bhima asked, leaning over Krishna.

"Yes--"

"That's not enough." Bhima snatched the measuring cup out of Krishna's hand and began scooping more rice into the pot that Krishna had set aside. Then he frowned, tossed aside the measuring cup, grasped the bag of rice in his hands, and upended it over the pot. He shook the bag until it was empty and rice grains were overflowing all over the kitchen counter and onto the floor. "That's better," he said.

Krishna gaped at him. "We have to conserve that!" he said. "We have two weeks before we make first port--"

"There's plenty more rice in storage."

"But--"

"What _is _this crap?" Nakula sneered, having appeared out of nowhere, apparently specifically for the purpose of making life difficult for Krishna. "_Panchalan _rice? Are you kidding me?!"

"It's what we have--"

"Weren't you taking a shower?" Bhima suddenly asked Nakula.

"I was. I finished."

"Huh. That's the single fastest shower I've ever seen you take."

"Well, no thanks to you, the water was _freezing cold._" Then Nakula turned his wrath back toward the overflowing pot of rice in front of Krishna. "That is unacceptable," Nakula said. "There's better rice in storage. I saw it."

"He's right," Bhima agreed, most unfortunately. "Panchalan rice is definitely inferior in taste and texture, compared to the--"

"Then we'll eat this _first_," Krishna tried to explain, exasperated, "and save the better rice for later. All right?"

Bhima stared at him. "Did you just interrupt me?" he asked, as if he couldn't believe it.

Krishna opened his mouth to answer, but Arjuna's voice cut him off. "Oh, no," Arjuna gasped, having appeared at Krishna's side almost as stealthily as Nakula had. "I can't eat dried meat. It's forbidden. It's _sinful._"

Krishna smacked his forehead.

"And is that yogurt low-fat?" Arjuna asked.

"_No._"

"But I can only eat the low-fat kind. And it has to be organic, too. Do you know the types of chemicals that they put in these long-lasting yogurt blends? Anyway, I can't eat it. Can you make mine without the yogurt? And without the meat. Don't put any meat in mine."

"Listen," Krishna said. "We don't have enough cooking ware on board this ship for me to make you a separate dish. There is ONE pot and everybody is going to eat the same--"

"But I'm giving you an order," Arjuna said, in the same disbelieving tone that Bhima had used a moment earlier.

"Don't listen to him," Draupadi said, suddenly pushing Arjuna away from Krishna. "Don't enable him."

"Enable me?!" Arjuna sputtered.

Draupadi whirled toward him. "Yes, Arjuna. I'm not going to let him _enable_ you. I am sick and tired of your bizarre eating habits which we _all know _is just your convenient excuse to cover up your eating disorder and frankly we are in the middle of a survival situation here and we can't afford to let _you _be a picky eater anymore!" She took a deep breath. "You will eat the pork and you will eat the yogurt!" She turned back toward Krishna. "You will COOK the pork and you will fix the yogurt!"

"But with the good rice," Nakula added.

"And more of it," Bhima said. "So what are you waiting for? Go fetch more rice!"

"The _good _rice!" Nakula repeated.

"But no pork!"

"And hurry up, I'm starving--"

Krishna suddenly slammed his hand down on the kitchen counter. "_That's it,_" he hissed. He whirled around, pushed Nakula and Arjuna aside, and stomped away from the kitchen area. "If you're going to be that picky about it," he snarled at all of them and none of them in particular, "then you can cook for yourselves!"

He turned his head for just a moment, just long enough to enjoy the looks on their faces. Then he marched resolutely out of the lounge.

* * *

VII.

Krishna was somewhat surprised when, ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door of his quarters.

He opened the door and saw Arjuna standing there, looking chagrined. "Um," Arjuna said, eloquently.

Krishna glared at him. "I'm not going to cook for you," he said. "Not even if you beg me." The idiot princes had to get their act together sooner rather than later, and Krishna wasn't about to let himself be a party to their continued helplessness anymore.

But Arjuna shook his head. "No, it's okay. Bhima is doing the cooking."

Krishna laughed. "Bhima?!"

"He said that he was hungry and that he couldn't wait any longer and that he wouldn't let Draupadi sully her hands." Arjuna looked at Krishna then said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For being a picky eater, I guess."

Krishna opened the door wider. "Come in," he said. "It's my understanding that this won't be my room for much longer. Care to help me pack my things again?"

Arjuna eyed Krishna carefully. Krishna wondered if he was recalling the night that they had first met, when Krishna had casually conscripted Arjuna into aiding him with the chore of searching for a missing cow, without any regard to the fact that he was a commoner and Arjuna was a prince. But then Arjuna stepped into Krishna's room and said, "All right." No protests.

Arjuna glanced around the room, taking in the state of affairs. There wasn't much packing left to do. The clothes that Krishna had brought with him were mostly already folded into neat piles on top of his bed, leaving only a few shirts that Krishna was still folding. Arjuna picked up a shirt, then fumbled with it, obviously unsure of how to get it into the crisp, square shape of the other folded shirts already piled on the bed.

"Like this," Krishna said, demonstrating.

Arjuna stared at him.

"Now what?" Krishna asked.

"I was just thinking," Arjuna said. "I was thinking about how sometimes you're so mysterious. But then just now in the kitchen, you got so angry so quickly, just like any regular person would."

Krishna laughed. "Believe it or not, I _do _have a temper."

Arjuna was quiet for a moment, then he said, "I do too. But I'm trying to get better. I know that I'm spoiled, and I know that I'm useless on board this ship, and I know that I'm immodest and I know that I'm too proud. And I know that I don't know how to be a commoner. But I'm trying to learn. I want to be better. A better person, um, I mean."

Krishna sat down in the only free spot on top of the bed, and looked up at Arjuna, his usual smile dancing on his lips. "Maybe you don't have to apologize for being spoiled," he said. "This is a rule of the universe: the middle child is _always _spoiled." Then he laughed. "That applies to me too, I guess."

"I guess so." Arjuna joined in his laughter.

"But," Krishna said, suddenly turning serious, "You're right. We all need to get our act together quickly. This exile will be dangerous," he said, solemnly. "It's a good thing that you're training with Bhima now."

Arjuna clumsily folded the shirt in his hands. "I don't know about that," he said. "Now Bhima says that he wants me to learn how to use an axe. Or something. When am I going to ever have to know that?"

"In a life-or-death situation."

"That's _exactly _what Bhima said. But we're not going to--"

"You still don't understand, do you?" Krishna suddenly cut in, not caring that he was interrupting a prince. "We're going to the Yama Quadrant. There are _enemies_ there, Arjuna. Powerful enemies. You didn't honestly think that your guru trained you just to shoot at pretty-painted targets with your magical bow, did you? You're a Great Warrior, remember? That means that when the time comes – when it's time for you to be the one to protect this family – then you and your Gandiva will have to draw blood."

Arjuna stared at Krishna again, shocked. Krishna could tell from the look on Arjuna's face that he wasn't yet ready to hear those words, no matter how true he knew them to be. But still Krishna pressed on. "And when this exile is over, if you can survive for thirteen years, then when it comes time for your brother Yudhisthira to fight to get his kingdom back, you'll be the one who--"

"_Stop it!_"

Krishna allowed himself to be silenced, for a moment. Then he said quietly, "You said that you wanted to become a better person, didn't you? That means facing reality, Arjuna. That means becoming a _stronger _person."

Arjuna was eyeing him suspiciously now. "I'm not going to let you change me," he suddenly said.

Krishna was taken aback by the oddness of this statement. "I don't want to change you. Nobody does." He looked up at Arjuna. "Do you know why your brother Bhima made that terrible vow at the dice game?"

"Because he was angry."

"Yes, that. And also because he didn't want _you _to have to be the one to shed _their _blood when the time comes." Krishna's voice was calm, steady, and deadly serious.

Now it was Arjuna's turn to look taken aback. But he recovered quickly, the shook his head in an emphatic gesture of negation. "No," he said. "It won't come to that. I swear. I won't let it." He stared down Krishna defiantly. "If I have to be a Great Warrior, then fine, I'll be a great warrior. But that doesn't mean that I can't also campaign for peace."

Krishna smiled up at him. "That's exactly why I like you," he said.

"Huhwhat?" Arjuna was clearly still about three laps behind in the conversation.

"Nothing. Never mind."

"All right." Arjuna reached down, pushed aside some clothing, and sat beside Krishna on the bed. He buried his head in his hands. "Give me a moment," he mumbled.

"For what?"

"Because I came here to tell you something specific, but now I'm starting to think that maybe Sahadeva was right, maybe I'm about to make a huge mistake, so I need to think about it for a moment." Arjuna pressed his hands against his face and frowned, obviously deep in thought.

Krishna sat quietly and waited.

Then Arjuna finally lifted his head out of his hands and said, "When we reshuffle the rooms, I was thinking that you and I could take the room that Nakula and Sahadeva have now – the one with the bunk beds."

Krishna was far more pleased to hear this proposal than he wanted to admit. "Are you sure that you don't mind?"

"I really don't mind."

"Because I wouldn't mind sharing a room with Sahadeva--"

"Um, I don't think that he likes you."

Krishna laughed. "I really have my work cut out for me, don't I?"

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

Arjuna stood up off the bed. "We should--" he began, but then never had the chance to finish. At that moment, the _Duryona _lurched sickeningly, shuddered, and then began to shake ominously.

Krishna bolted off the bed, grabbed Arjuna's arm, and then dragged the other man bodily out into the hallway. "We have to get to the bridge!" he shouted. "_Now!_"

* * *

VIII.

"Oh no. Oh _no_," Krishna said when he sat down at the helm and took one look at the readouts scrolling across the multiple screens on his station.

"The safety overrides are shutting down the engine and I can't stop them!" Nakula shouted into the comm that Yudhisthira had mounted on his ear. Yudhisthira winced, reached up to try to push the comm plug a bit further from his ear, then instantly regretted the gesture as the _Duryona _lurched again and he lost his balance. Somehow he managed to fall gracelessly into the captain's chair. Oh well, that had been his destination anyway.

"So _why _are the engines shutting down?" Yudhisthira asked, as he untangled his arms and legs and attempted to position himself in his chair.

"Because the navigation computer is telling the engines that we're heading straight toward an unstable quasar and I can't get it to stop the kickout sequence---"

"But we should be in empty space now," Yudhisthira said. "There's nothing out here but dark matter."

"Yes," said Krishna. "That's because this is a trap."

Silence greeted this proclamation. Yudhisthira risked a glance around the bridge, quickly, making sure that everybody was at their stations – Krishna at the helm, Draupadi beside him, Sahadeva momentarily taking Nakula's seat, Arjuna and Bhima seated below. Nakula was in the engine room. Yudhisthira forced his hands to stop trembling, and turned toward Krishna. "What do you mean?"

"I mean it's a very common technique used to force ships out of jumpspace and render them helpless." The _Duryona _gave another threatening shudder as Krishna spoke; the white void of jumpspace visible through the transparent ceiling of the bridge momentarily flashed with color. They would be out any minute now. But Krishna pressed on, calmly. "This is an old rakshasa trick. Quasars and certain other bodies exist in both normal space and jumpspace. Ships have to avoid them. But it's possible to broadcast a false signal that a navigational computer would scan as, say, the presence of an uncharted anomaly…" He trailed off, apparently reading the confused look in Draupadi's eyes and the impatience on Yudhisthira's face, and then apparently deciding that a lecture about the fundamental laws of jumpspace could wait for some other time. "Anyway. It's probably just a pirate's trap."

The _Duryona _lurched again, and vibrated sickeningly.

"Here we go!" Nakula shouted a warning into Yudhisthira's ear. "Kickout in three, two, one…"

Yudhisthira turned his face toward the canopy of the bridge, watching in horror as the white nothing of jumpspace dissolved into the inky blackness of deep space. There was a sudden sense of stillness, and an eerie silence. Yudhisthira did not so much hear the engines stop as he did gradually become aware of the absence of their sound.

_That's it? _Yudhisthira thought. For a moment the felt as though he were in a dream, as if everything had become too surreal. He sat in his chair with his head tilted back, watching the almost hypnotic dissolution of the non-colors of jumpspace all around him, listening to the silence, listening to his family breathing.

The ship was vibrating a bit still, but he had expected the sudden shutdown of the engines to produce a more violent stop.

Unfortunately, Yudhisthira hadn't taken into account the forces of inertia. And a moment later, those forces caught up to him.

The slam came hard and fast. It was, Yudhisthira imagined, not unlike what driving a hoverer into a brick wall would feel like. He pitched forward – thank the Lord the restraints on his seat prevented him from falling all over Krishna – and his head snapped back and forth so fast that it hurt. _Ouch. _The lights on the bridge flickered. The straining metal body of the _Duryona _groaned threateningly.

Yudhisthira gasped, trying to steady himself. "What's going on?" he shouted, both at the comm mounted on his ear and at the rest of his family on the bridge. "What's going on?!" he repeated. Then he remembered the proper term to use. "Status!"

"We're dead," Nakula answered on the other end of the comm. "That's your status. We're as good as dead. The engines are shot. They're not going to be able to jump again."

Yudhisthira opened his mouth to report this to the rest of the bridge, but then he saw the looks on Draupadi's and Sahadeva's faces. They had heard. Yudhisthira realized belatedly that Nakula's voice hadn't been coming from the comm in his ear, but from the intercom system that the entire bridge could hear. Yudhisthira groaned and rubbed his neck; he knew that he had whiplash already, and his brain was still rattling in his skull, preventing him from quite grasping what was going on around him or what he was supposed to do next.

Then Yudhisthira realized the most important question that immediately needed to be answered. "_Who?_" he growled.

Bhima, who had stood up out of his seat, was pointing at the bridge canopy. "I'm guessing them," he said.

Yudhisthira swiveled his head – an act which unfortunately caused a sharp pain to shoot down his spine – and looked through the canopy. Then his heart sank into his stomach. There was a ship floating out there in the inky blackness. There was nothing else immediately visible, beyond the distant stars, and Yudhisthira had no point of comparison from which to visually gauge a sense of the ship's scale. Nevertheless, he could tell that it was enormous: bulbous, round, and not very aerodynamic looking. If it was meant for deep space travel, however, then it didn't have to be. The ship was an organic-looking collection of bulges and globes, a patchwork of what appeared to be dozens of different shades and types of metals layered on its hull, with a graceful and somewhat predatory-looking – but unfortunately unfamiliar – insignia painted on the largest bulbous growth immediately visible on the side facing the _Duryona_. Yudhisthira squinted, and saw dozens of unmistakable portrubences on all surfaces on the ship – broadcast relays _and _weapon turrets. Great.

"So _those _are the bastards."

Yudhisthira turned with a start. His neck screamed in pain again. He hadn't even noticed that Nakula had entered the bridge and was now standing right beside him. Yudhisthira opened his mouth to say something, but then the _Duryona _gave a sickening lurch again.

"That would be their tractor beam," Krishna said.

Yudhisthira turned toward Draupadi. "Are we picking up any sort of identification broadcast from them?"

"No. Nothing."

Nakula turned and glared at Yudhisthira. "Well, _Captain_? Any brilliant plans?"

"We wait for them to hail us," Yudhisthira answered, surprised by the smoothness and readiness of his own reply.

"Come again?"

"I said, we wait for them to hail us. We have no jumping capability anymore, and we're at their mercy. Our first priority now is ensuring our own survival." Yudhisthira stood up off the captain's chair, shakily. His neck was really hurting now, but he forced himself to grit his teeth and suppress the pain. "Who has the comm?"

"That's my job," Draupadi said, "and it's--" She looked down at the slim control panel attached to one arm of her chair. "Oh good. It's ringing."

"I don't hear any ringing," Yudhisthira said.

"I mean we're being hailed but it's not ringing because it's obviously _broken_ but at least it's blinking so--"

Draupadi bit her lip, stopping herself from snapping further. "Fine. I'm going to patch this to the big speakers. Let's hope that it works."

It did work, and the bridge was immediately filled with the sound of a woman's voice speaking an utterly unfamiliar language. The voice was low and guttural, almost growling, and loud. Too loud. But that might have been a fault of the broadcast system more than anything else.

"If I say something can she hear me?" Yudhisthira shouted over the sound of the woman's growling.

The woman fell silent instantly, as if in response. "Yes," Draupadi said, stating the obvious. "They can hear the bridge now. Do you want to put on a headset so that she can only hear you?"

"We only have two headsets and they're both broken," Nakula interjected, unhelpfully. "I was going to fix them eventually, but I thought that we wouldn't need them until we arrived at Gajapati."

Yudhisthira closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Does anybody recognize what language we're being hailed in?" he asked, not caring whether the woman on the other end of the line heard or understood him.

"Oh yes," Bhima answered immediately. "They're rakshasa."

Yudhisthira snapped his head toward Bhima, ignoring the instant flare of pain that shot down his spine. "_What?!_"

"I said that they're rakshasa…"

"Why didn't you say something earlier?!" The Yudhisthira caught himself. "Wait. How do _you _know what rakshasa language sounds like?"

Bhima opened his mouth to answer, but Nakula cut him off. "Great," Nakula snarled, "just great!" He pointed one finger angrily at Yudhisthira. "We're going to _die _out here now and it will be all _your_ fault because those rakshasa are going to _eat us alive_ except for maybe Sahadeva and I who might be lucky enough to be sold into sex slavery which would make this the third time in one week that you've _ruined my life_ and--"

"Me?! How is this my fault?!"

"If it weren't for you then we would never have--"

"_Nakula_," Bhima said. He marched to the upper level of the bridge, the _Duryona _shaking ominously with his every step. "Sit down. And shut up. The comm is still open. They can hear you."

"They can't understand a word that we're saying and you know it," Nakula countered. "They're rakshasa, just a bunch of asura-spawned monsters, they don't even--"

"Greetings Kuru ship _Duryona_. Please respond if you understand this message. Over."

Yudhisthira momentarily allowed himself to relish the look on Nakula's face. The voice that they had just heard over the comm was still a woman's voice, and still as guttural and growly as the first voice had been, but clearly belonging to a different speaker. The new voice was speaking flawless High Kuru speech, too.

Yudhisthira held out his hands, signaling for the rest of the bridge to be silent. If only he had a working headset, he thought wistfully. Then he forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. "This is the _Duryona_, yes," he said. "We are currently unable to intercept your identification broadcast," Yudhisthira said, as politely as he could. He realized that he probably sounded absurd, pointing this fact out to a rakshasa ship that had just forcefully dragged the _Duryona _out of jumpspace for what could under no circumstances possibly be a benevolent reason. "May I ask, uh, who…?"

"I will be acting as your interpreter," the woman responded, without bothering to answer Yudhisthira's question. "A small boarding party is preparing to shuttle to your docking lock. I will be accompanying the boarding party. We expect all seven of your crew members to be present at the docking lock and unarmed when we board. I assure you that our intentions are peaceful and will remain peaceful so long as we do not meet any resistance."

"What is your purpose for boarding?" Yudhisthira asked quickly.

"We intend to relieve you of some of your food supplies and munitions."

"But your intentions are 'peaceful.'"

"Yes. We mean no harm. Kuru captain… I do not know if you have figured this out yet, but this is a robbery. It does not have to turn into a massacre."

The threat behind the invisible woman's words was real and palpable. Yudhisthira could feel the eyes of his family boring into him. But he took a deep breath, and decided to make his gamble. "Please," he said, suddenly. "Your gravitational trap destroyed our jump drive. We are unable to return to jumpspace in our current state. We are willing to donate food and munitions in exchange for a few basic repair supplies."

For an endless moment, there was utter silence on the other end of the comm. Then the woman said, "Is this true?"

"Yes. It is absolutely true. I realize that we are in no position to make demands of you, and can only beg, throwing ourselves at your mercy. But please. Be you thieves or not, if your intentions are truly as noble as you claim, then you won't leave us stranded out here to face a slow and inevitable death. Will you?"

"I must consult with my superiors," the interpreter said, then abruptly ended the comm connection with an audible click.

Yudhisthira leaned back in his chair and let out a long, slow breath. _Oh Lord,_ he prayed silently, _please let this work._

"What was THAT?!" Nakula exploded, predictably. "Did you just surrender to a bunch of rakshasa?!"

"No, I didn't surrender," Yudhisthira answered calmly. "I begged them for mercy." He turned his head, ignoring the pain, and regarded each of them in turn – Sahadeva. Nakula. Bhima. Arjuna, who had followed Bhima up onto the bridge. Krishna. Draupadi. "We have no other choice," Yudhisthira said. "We need to repair the jump drive, or we will die. If we're lucky, if these rakshasa thieves are as fair-minded as they claim to be, then they will at least give us the supplies that we need to make the repairs ourselves. If not…" He trailed off, then looked at Arjuna. "We have somebody who can never be unarmed," Yudhisthira said, carefully. "And a narrow hallway outside of the docking lock. And--"

"You want me to kill them?" Arjuna asked, his voice a breathy, shocked whisper.

"No. I want you to take hostages."

Arjuna swallowed.

"It may be our only way to force them to help us," Yudhisthira said.

"And if the big guys on board that ship decide that their hostages aren't worth saving…?" Bhima frowned down at his brother.

"Then we board their shuttle, take it back to the mother ship, and storm the ship until we get the supplies that we need – or take a hostage that matters, or something – and then make a daring escape. But that is Plan Number Three and I pray to the Lord that it won't come to that."

Draupadi whistled, impressed.

But Bhima apparently was still not. "There are problems with those plans," he said. "First, what are you going to do about the tractor beam? And second, I know that _you _would never actually go through with a threat to harm a hostage."

Yudhisthira bit his lip, thinking through his response. Then he answered, slowly and carefully, "Bhima, I do not lie. And if I say that I intend to harm a hostage if certain conditions are not met, then that will not be a lie." He closed his eyes. "May the Lord have mercy on my soul. But these are not innocents that we are – or might be – threatening here. If these rakshasas intend to let us die, then it will be in self-defense that we lash out against them. It will be justified."

Silence greeted this. Yudhisthira stared resolutely straight ahead at the alien ship still visible through the transparent canopy of the bridge, carefully avoiding the eyes of his wife or his brothers. But then he felt a cool hand on his shoulder. He looked up – a painful exertion, unfortunately – and saw Arjuna looking somberly down at him.

"For you, I am not afraid to draw blood with my arrows," he said. "I am not afraid."

Yudhisthira reached up, and touched Arjuna's resting hand with his own. "I still hope it will not come to that," he said.

Arjuna nodded.

"We're being hailed again," Draupadi suddenly announced, in lieu of the incoming comm signal that was apparently still not working. "Answering now."

"_Duryona._" The interpreter's voice filled the bridge again. "One of our mechanics will be accompanying our boarding party and will be willing to assist you with the most necessary repairs."

"Thank you," Yudhisthira said. And he meant it.

"Repeat: We expect all seven of you to be waiting by the docking lock when we arrive. Unarmed. We are rakshasas, and you will not be able to conceal weapons in our presence."

"Understood."

"Our continued benevolence in this affair depends on your continued cooperation."

"Of course."

"We will be docking shortly," the interpreter said. Then she abruptly cut off the comm signal for a second time.

Yudhisthira gripped the armrests of his chair, but forced himself to remain calm. "Well, you heard her," he said. "Get to the docking lock. Now. We are _going _to cooperate with them if we intend to survive this."

"You know they're going to steal our food, right?" Nakula said. "We need that to survive, too."

"If they're going to repair our engine so that we won't die out here, then they're probably going to leave us enough food to at least make it to a nearby port," Yudhisthira answered. "If not Gajapati, then we can stop at Angul." He glared at Nakula. "The human body can survive for a week without food."

"I can survive longer," Arjuna added helpfully. "This one time I went a whole month without eating anything--"

Bhima clapped a hand over Arjuna's mouth before he could go any further. "Not helping," he growled.

* * *

IX.

"Can you see them?"

Arjuna pressed his nose against the transparent viewing pane beside the docking lock. "Yes, they're coming." He frowned. The small shuttle approaching the _Duryona _appeared to be as haphazardly-constructed as the much larger mothership from which it had launched. Arjuna didn't understand how such a patchwork creation could even be space-worthy. But pondering that question wasn't doing him any good.

He stepped back from the viewing pane and took his place beside Bhima. They were all standing in a line in the hallway that ran alongside the docking lock; Bhima and Arjuna were standing closest to the lock. Arjuna understood exactly why he had been placed first in line nearest to the lock. He understood exactly what he was expected to do in case something went wrong.

_I once faced down a deva himself, _Arjuna reminded himself, forcefully. _I can handle a few rakshasa. This is what I was trained to do. I will _not _disappoint Mr. Drona._

"Watch them carefully when they board," Draupadi said. "Consider them extremely unpredictable and volatile. This robbery must be an act of desperation on their part."

"How so?" Yudhisthira asked.

"What kind of rakshasa," Draupadi answered, "would rob a ship like ours to steal food supplies when they could, of course, just devour the crew instead?" She pointed to the viewing panel. "Do you see the size of that ship out there? They wouldn't normally bother to prey on a small catch like us unless they were facing some sort of terrible situation. So again, this must be an act of desperation." She turned to Arjuna. "Be very, very careful when they board. Don't make any sudden moves. If they're going to turn hostile, _wait _for themto turn hostile first."

Arjuna nodded at her. Then he turned his attention back toward the docking lock. "They're here," he said. Red warning lights flashed above the inner door of the lock; the rakshasa shuttle was docking.

Arjuna concentrated his gaze on the airlock door, slowed his breathing, and forced his mind to remain calm and blank. If something went wrong, he would only have seconds to react. Less than seconds. He needed to keep his senses under control, he needed to stay alert, he needed to—

A sharp, red-hot pain suddenly flared in Arjuna's chest.

He doubled over immediately, gasping with surprise, panicked fingers clutching at his own shirt. He vaguely heard Draupadi call his name and felt Bhima's hands reaching out to steady him. But the searing hot pain throbbing in his chest was rapidly overwhelming his senses. His thoughts whirled in a panic. _What is it what is it oh god what if it's my heart again what if it's Gandiva I don't understand it hurts so much it's probably Gandiva it'll kill me this time it—_

Voices shouting. Bhima's huge, rough hands tearing at his shirt. And then at his neck. Arjuna choked and gasped, and then—

Relief. The blessed, cool relief of the cold air within the _Duryona _on the bare skin of his chest.

The relief only lasted a moment, though. The pain was still there, although the source of it was gone. Arjuna looked down at the bare skin of his chest, red and welting and blistering. His eyes traveled further, attracted by the glow of red-hot metal. A broken chain at his feet. Ashwatthama's ring, still so hot that it burned with pure white light, rolling across the floor at Arjuna's feet.

The floor was melting. Or at least, the small portion of the floor that the ring was rolling across was melting.

"_Water!" _Draupadi was shouting. "Get him cold water!"

Arjuna was kneeling on the ground now. He wasn't sure exactly when he had gone from standing to kneeling, but there he was. The pain in his chest was still there, deep and hot. It wasn't just his skin that had been burnt – something more was going on. The damage was deeper than that. He felt as if his bones, his heart, and his lungs were on fire. Bhima was kneeling over him, still trying to work his shirt completely off his body, but Arjuna's limp arms were in the way. Arjuna tried to lift his arms to help Bhima, but they felt too heavy to move. _Something's very wrong here. _He lifted his head toward Bhima, tried to open his mouth, and tried to say something – to tell Bhima that there was something much, much worse than the burn on his skin happening to his body – but at that moment, the airlock door opened.

_They must have heard us shouting, _Arjuna though, numbly. _I wonder what they thought was going on. _He had his answer in an instant, however, when he suddenly found himself staring down the dark barrel of an unfamiliar weapon.

Things happened all at once. Arjuna couldn't see anything – his field of vision was filled completely by the weapon pointed in his face – but he could hear. Three voices at once. A rakashasa, who said something in his own language. Nakula, shouting "What did you _do _to him, you monsters?!" And Yudhisthira, at the same time, trying to push aside Nakula and explain, "We have an injured party, we're sorry, please put down your weapons, we--"

"_Bhima?!_"

The last voice was the voice of the interpreter who had spoken to them over the comm.

Slowly, Bhima lifted his hands from Arjuna. "_Hidimbi?!_"

Total silence.

Then, the interpreter's voice again. "No. No. No no no no no. You're supposed to be a prince. What are you _doing _here?! You--"

"What am _I _doing here?! What are _you _doing here?! You told me that--"

Arjuna didn't get to hear the rest of this exchange, however. The darkness of the gun barrel in his face seemed to expand to swallow him whole; his hearing buzzed, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he fainted dead away.

* * *

To be continued.


	26. Exile 02: Past Tense

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more information, and useful things like a character and terms glossary, please visit mahastory dot livejournal dot com. Much love and thanks to Neeti for beta-ing this chapter! Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

* * *

EXILE 02: PAST TENSE

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIFTEEN DAYS, AND SIXTEEN HOURS AGO

One of them was alone.

That surprised her. The brothers were almost never apart, at least not as long as she had been observing them. They were a strange combination, oddly mismatched, and as different as night and day – but they were also inseparable. Or had been, until that morning.

Hidimbi cautiously crawled through the bushes, approaching for a closer look. It was the big one who was out there all alone in the forest, crashing through the underbrush as he followed an animal trail down to the bank of a not-insubstantial stream, already stripping off his shirt as he walked. "Day forty-three," Hidimbi whispered into her collar-recorder, "eight hundred hours. One of the princes appears to be going for a swim – alone. I wonder what happened to his brother." There was no need for her to whisper, not technically. After all, her cloak of maya prevented her research subjects from seeing or hearing her. Nevertheless, the overwhelming sense that a whisper was called for was still a difficult feeling to shake.

Hidimbi had been trailing and closely observing the two Kuru princes for the past three days, ever since they had first shown up in her forest. Previously, she had limited her research to hovering around the edges of the impoverished shantytowns surrounding the city that the Kurus called "Hastinapura." She had observed much about the lives of the bottom rung of humans in this society, all of it quite fascinating, and all of it leaving her hungry to know more. But even with her cloak of maya, she dared not venture too far into human habitation. She was no magician, and her maya was imperfect. That, and the fact that there were a number of devakin concentrated in the area of the royal palace provided a powerful deterrent. The gathering of that many devakin in one place had the effect of cloaking Hastinapura in an aura so powerful that it sometimes felt as though it were burning against Hidimbi's skin.

When the two devakin princes had shown up in the forest, however, the game had changed. As it was just the two of them, they had produced a gentle enough aura that eventually Hidimbi had begun to build up an immunity to it. The more time she had spent close to them, the stronger her immunity became. Unlike the poor farmers that Hidimbi had grown used to studying, the royal princes had been a completely different breed of research subject. Their language and their mannerisms had initially thrown Hidimbi for a loop, but it ultimately hadn't taken her long to grow accustomed to their way of speaking. The more that she had listened to them, the more information that she had gleaned about them. She had learned that they were brothers, that they were princes, that they were attempting – for a short while, at least – something close to might what be called a "vacation" in the forest. Unfortunately, the "vacation" hadn't been much of one, as the skinny, chain-smoking prince had been unable to shut up about politics for more than a few heartbeats at a time, and the tall, burly prince had spent most of the past few days rolling his eyes and attempting to get his brother to relax. Most of his attempts had been futile.

Now he was alone, on the bank of the mountain stream still swollen from the rain that had fallen several days ago, stripping off his clothes. Hidimbi watched him for a moment, then averted her eyes. Despite the beliefs of many of her kind, Hidimbi knew that humans weren't quite as low as base animals, and therefore they deserved to be granted at least a modicum of respect and dignity. Hidimbi had no problem listening in on – and recording – her subjects' conversations. That was all done in the name of science, of course. But she could think of no good excuse to violate her subjects' privacy when they were nude and vulnerable, whether they were aware of the violation or not.

Hidimbi carefully spoke into her collar-recorder again. "He's getting into the water now, I think." She looked, suspecting from the sound of his splashing that it was relatively safe to look at him again. It was. "The flow has a dangerous current but he appears unconcerned. Swimming now. His back markings are very interesting. Note to self: More study of devakin markings in future. Would tracings from living subjects be unethical? Debate later."

She watched him swim for a few moments, the broad strokes of his oversized arms cutting effortlessly through the rushing water. Then, apparently satisfied, he jumped out of the water, flopped himself down on a relatively flat area of the riverbank, sighed contentedly, then laced his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He sunned himself in the bright morning light, still completely naked. His legs spread wide apart. This time, Hidimbi did not look away.

"A nap? So early?" Hidimbi mused into her recorder. "Perhaps Kuru royalty is bred to be as lazy as rakshasa royalty. Would not be a surprise." She carefully stepped toward him, approaching closer and closer, until she was no longer protected by the branches and leaves of the forest. She stood beside him, looming over him, but still cloaked from head to toe in her own maya, unseen. "Interesting. Have not observed such casual disregard for nudity taboo before. Especially when with his brother – subject was much more reserved. Still unknown reasons for this culture's development of inconvenient modesty in such a miserably hot climate."

She stared at him openly now, figuring in the back of her mind that this was more scientific observation than not. Still, whether judged by human or by rakshasa standards, he was quite the breathtaking sight. Far taller than an average human, his body hard and thick with muscles, well-toned and well-shaped from head to toe, save for some softness around what Hidimbi assumed would eventually be an ample belly. He had that particular type of handsome face that most devakin seemed to have, not so much handsome in an extraordinary way, but rather symmetrical and evenly-spaced, which accounted for most of what humans defined as beautiful anyway. Unfortunately, he had a very human nose. Hidimbi tapped thoughtfully at her own rakshasa face, at her tiny rakshasa nose; she did not understand why something as alien as a nose should fascinate her so much, but it did.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes.

Hidimbi momentarily froze. She was leaning over him, and he was staring right into her eyes. But then she reminded herself, with a mental chuckle, that he couldn't possibly be actually seeing her, let alone detecting her presence with any of his other limited human senses. _Don't be silly, _she told herself. _He's looking through you, not at you._ She gazed some more at his face, thinking that she probably should turn her head to see what could possibly have been so fascinating as to cause him to stare so intently. But she couldn't look away from his eyes. "Eyes appear to be dark brown and unremarkable for his race, save for hint of unseen colors beneath irises. Difficult to describe. Perhaps an effect unique to devakin? Requires further investigation. Quite a lovely effect, regardless."

"Why thank you," the Kuru prince said.

Then Hidimbi really did freeze. Her brain activity momentarily crashed to a halt, her thoughts choking on two impossible questions – _How can he see me?! How can he understand a word that I just said?! _Her mouth opened and closed, stupidly. Her voice rasped in her throat. Finally, however, she managed to gasp out two words: "You're welcome."

He squinted up at her. There was no fear in his face, only a half-asleep, dreamy sort of curiosity. However, Hidimbi could see his muscles beginning to tense, his legs slowly drawing together, his body preparing to spring into action if so required. But his hands remained laced casually behind his head. He wasn't even making an effort to protect or shield his bits. "Are you a yaksha?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I'm a rakshasa. Uh… Pleased to meet you."

Slowly, he removed his hands from behind his head. Slowly, he sat up. "I think we've met," he said. He was keeping eye contact with her even as he repositioned himself. "Are you the one who's been watching us?"

"…You could see me?"

"Not always." Now he was finally drawing his legs together in a more protective position. "Sometimes out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes straight on. At first I thought I was imagining you, but you kept getting clearer and clearer."

Hidimbi didn't know what to say that. She wasn't exactly sure how to read his reaction, either. Then she finally said, "I mean you no harm."

"I kind of figured." Unbelievably, he gave her a wry smile. "But I thought you were yaksha. I thought it would have been a bad idea to say or do anything as long as you weren't hurting us. And I didn't say anything to Yudhisthira because, you know, he has problems with his blood pressure." Suddenly his smile vanished. "But you're a rakshasa."

"I am."

"And you were spying on us?" His eyes narrowed. "If you're plotting something against Yudhisthira, so help me God I'll--"

"Oh no no no no no no. Nothing like that." She shook her head frantically. "I'm an anthropologist."

That gave him pause. "A what?"

"An anthropologist. You know, a scientist."

He was sitting up completely now, his whole body tense, ready to spring at a moment's notice. His eyes narrowed even further. "You're joking. Rakshasa don't have _scientists._"

"And why wouldn't we?!"

He seemed taken aback by the question. And he clearly didn't have an answer for it, at least not right away. But finally he said, "Because you don't."

Hidimbi crossed her arms over her chest. "All right, Kuru. Say what you will, but I am a scientist. And I have two scientific questions for you. One, how can see me? And two, how can you understand my speech?" She pointed one claw at him. "Somehow I doubt you've ever sat down and studied a rakshasa language before."

He looked taken aback, again. "You're speaking… Oh." His eyes widened. "I don't know." He stared at her. "I really don't know. I also know that I've never seen a rakshasa who wears clothes before."

Hidimbi laughed at the absurdity of his statement. "Then you've never seen a rakshasa! We have civilized standards of modesty," she said, glancing up and down his body and smirking, "unlike some."

He shrugged, still unashamed despite her mocking. "I know you were watching Yudhisthira take a bath yesterday. Whatever." But now he was standing up and stepping toward the pile of clothing that he'd left on the riverbank.

Hidimbi glanced away from him as he bent over to pick up his clothes, again strangely compelled to afford him a bit of privacy, despite the fact that she had just spent several minutes staring at him in his full frontal nudity. At least she was cheating herself out a glimpse of his no-doubt wonderful ass. "So what happened to your brother?" she asked.

"Some big stupid… scandal… thing. He had to go back to the palace right away. Damage control. Our current Ministry of Finance is basically done for, though." Suddenly he cursed. "Why am I telling you this?!"

"It is the custom among your people that shared nudity enforces a bond of intimacy, isn't it?"

" 'Shared' my butt."

"For the record, I never saw your butt." Hidimbi turned back toward him. He was fully dressed now, eyeing her cautiously as he re-buttoned his shirt. "I know you," she said. "You're Bhima. You're the second prince born of Kunti. Your father was the deva Vayu. Your Gift is physical strength far beyond that of a normal human, even one of your size." She tried her best to smile at him. "So, in the interest of fairness, let's start sharing now. My name is Hidimbi. I'm an anthropologist by training. My specialty area is human civilizations. I abstain from consuming self-aware beings such as yourself." She bowed low to him. "I apologize deeply for violating your privacy."

He gazed at her evenly. "Was that an introduction? It makes it sound like you're not going to leave me alone anytime soon."

"Oh, I couldn't. Not now." Hidimbi shook her head. "Not now that I've learned that you can see through my maya and inexplicably understand my native tongue. I _have _to study you more. I have to find out why. I can't leave you alone anymore."

He glared at her. "I'm a person. Not a test… thing. And I'm royalty so technically I don't have to put up with anything that I don't want to." Then he turned away from her. "You're as bad as the High Council."

Her ears perked up, her senses instantly alerted to the exciting presence of potentially new information. "You mean the High Council of Brahmins? My observations so far had not led me to believe that they were a scientific body--"

"They're not. But." He pointed at his ear. "They put a chip in my skull anyway."

"I thought that you were royalty and didn't have to do anything that you didn't want to."

"Even royalty submits to the Council." He took a step toward her, no longer playing at being friendly. There was a distinct hint of menace in the way that he moved his enormous body. "But you're not the Council. In fact, you're an enemy."

Hidimbi stood her ground. "I assure you, I'm not your enemy. In fact, I'm on your side. The side of humans, that is. Really. I am." She stared up at him, unafraid. "Listen, there's a lot that I could tell you, and a lot that I want you to tell me. So let's stop making this a study, and stop casting you as the object of study. Shall we call it a friendly exchange of information instead?"

He stared at her.

"Admit it," she pressed on. "You have questions that you want to ask me. And you don't really want to fight me, do you?"

He slowly shook his head. "Well… No. You are a woman, after all."

"And a rakshasa."

He laughed. "That too." Then he looked at her seriously. "Why aren't you afraid of me?"

She shrugged. "It's kind of hard to be afraid of someone once you've seen his waggily."

" 'Waggily'? Is _that _what you just called it?!"

"Hmm. I've observed that slang terms for genitalia truly don't seem to translate across cultures." Then she held out her hand to him. "Peace?"

He hesitated for a moment, as if unsure what to do about her long, sharp claws. Then he reached out and grasped her hand anyway, unafraid. "Peace," he said.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIFTEEN DAYS, AND EIGHTEEN MINUTES AGO

The night was cool, but she seemed unbothered by the chill, despite the fact that the sleeves of her workshirt were rolled up and her arms bare. "So do you always understand foreign languages instantly?" she asked, as she pushed through the underbrush ahead of Bhima.

"No. No no no no no. You should have seen what a disaster I was on Madra. I couldn't understand a word that anybody said to me."

Her back was to him, but when she turned her head he could see her frowning at that. "It doesn't make sense," she mumbled. Then she suddenly paused and said, "Well, here we are." She stepped into a small clearing, and Bhima followed her.

Aha, Bhima thought. So this was her campsite. Bhima recognized a tent – good to know that rakshasa still used some of the same primitive technology that humans did – but little else. There was a cleared area around the tent, but that was it. There were no visible signs of a fire, or water storage, or—

"Come on in," she said, lifting up the flap of her tent.

Bhima hesitated. The tent barely looked large enough for him to sit inside of it comfortably, let alone the two of them sitting together. "I'm not sure--"

"Just trust me," she said. She was smiling, showing off her teeth. Bhima suspected that meant that she had some sort of maya trick up her sleeve. He was getting better and better at reading her facial and body language, especially after having spent a full day in her company.

Bhima peered at her for a moment, taking in the sight of her face in the moonlight. Hers was the first rakshasa face that he had ever seen, and at first he had thought it as strange and alien as all of the stories had led him to believe it would be. Her head was taller and thinner than that of a human's, her face long and flat, her small nose barely protruding from the plane of her face. Her eyes were deep-set and dark, her lips full and sensuous, but her teeth long and sharp, her fangs protruding low over her lower lip. She had a predator's face, but there was an innocent gleam in her eyes that seemed to cancel out the intimidating sight of her sharp fangs. Judged by human standards, the rest of her body was too tall, too long, and too thin as well; her basic outline seemed human enough, two arms and two legs and a pleasantly curvy torso, the shape of her more feminine features clearly visible even though her workshirt and practical hiking trousers. But she had other features that immediately betrayed her inhumanity; her long fingers ended not with nails but in elongated claws, and her feet seemed too large to fit with her long, thin legs.

She blinked at him. "Why are you staring at me?"

He laughed. "Just getting back at you for earlier."

She echoed his laugh, shaking her head slightly. Her braid shook with her. She wore her hair long, like most human women that Bhima knew. The braid that Hidimbi was currently sporting was done in a style similar to the fashion in Hastinapura at the moment. Bhima's cousin Dusshala wore her hair in a similar style. Bhima wondered if Hidimbi was wearing a genuinely rakshasa hairstyle, or if her braid was yet another one of her attempts to imitate the human subjects that she found so endlessly fascinating to study.

Hidimbi finished laughing, then tucked a stray strand of hair behind her hair, attempting unsuccessfully to stuff it into her braid. Her ears were a bit larger than a human's ears, but they were rounded and soft-looking, not sharp and pointed like the ears of the rakshasas drawn in the cartoons that Bhima had watched as a child. "How about this," she proposed. "Instead of you getting back at me, I'd rather make it up to you--"

"That was the plan, wasn't it?"

"I know. I did promise you." Tea and a hot meal in exchange for a peaceful conversation. The peaceful conversation had turned into a full day of speaking to each other, however. And Bhima had been the one who had provided their midday meal of roasted fish and leftover rations, chosen from among what the servants at Hastinapura had prepared for him before his trip. This evening, however, Hidimbi seemed determined to hold up her end of the bargain. "Come on in," she repeated, still holding open the flap of her tent. The interior of the tent, however, was far too dark for Bhima to peer inside of it.

Bhima cautiously stepped inside, then ungracefully stumbled down the first set of stairs. _Stairs?! _He caught his feet, and heard Hidimbi laughing behind him. It took him a moment to adjust his eyes to the dim lighting of his surroundings, but once he was able to lift his head and get a good look around, he nearly lost his footing again.

"I expanded this space a little," Hidimbi said, "to make it more comfortable." She sat down on a long, low couch and watched Bhima carefully, apparently waiting to gauge his reaction.

He was suitably impressed. "Is this real?" he asked. The room that they were in was large and long, the floor covered in tastefully coordinated carpets and pillows, a few chairs and couches scattered throughout the room. The walls around them were seemingly solid, and covered in charts and graphs – some of which were clearly maps, a few of which were clearly maps of areas on Kuru. There were books stacked perilously high and piled all over the room, as well as several neatly stacked boxes of datadiscs. In one corner of the room there was a small table upon which loomed what Bhima assumed was some sort of computer, although it was an unfamiliar shape and make. Lamps of every shade and shape dotted the room, providing low and colorful illumination, save for a light mounted directly above the computer-like thing, which burned hot and white. Bhima did not see any obvious communication equipment, nor a media console – maybe that was all provided by the computer-like thing? He was certainly not a technical geek like Nakula or Sahadeva, but Bhima was still curious about that strange-looking machine in the corner. He didn't care how it worked, but he wanted to see what it could do.

"Of course this is real," Hidimbi said with a laugh. She knocked the couch that she was sitting on with her fist. "I made it, after all. With my maya."

"I thought that maya was just illusions."

"Bhima, this entire plane of existence is an illusion. Not to you or I, because we're caught up in it. But it is. And an illusion within an illusion is just as real as the rest of it." She shrugged, astoundingly nonchalant about the words that she was speaking. "There aren't many humans or rakshasas who can learn to see through the illusion. Most of us, we can't see the underlying truth of things until we die. And then we get sent right back to do it all over again."

Bhima eyed her warily. He had not expected their conversation to take this turn. "You believe all that?" he asked.

She seemed startled by the question. "Well, of course." Now it was her turn to eye him warily. "I don't see how anybody could not."

"Of course I believe it," Bhima said quickly. He sat down on a pile of pillows across from her. "It's just that… What you just said. That's almost exactly what my mother would tell me when I was little. It's the same thing that Grandpa Bhisma used to teach me, too. I guess I never expected that rakshasa might have the same ideas about the world." He looked around the room again, and this time spotted something that he hadn't caught the first time, as it had been behind him. There was a statue by the entrance to the room, set into an alcove. It was a statue of a tall, slender creature with many arms. It might have been the same as any of a dozen deva statues that Bhima was used to seeing, but something about this statue was different. The face of the creature was different, and it was holding unfamiliar items in its many stone hands. But a garland of fresh flowers had been draped around the statue's head, and a plate of dumplings had been left at its feet. Just like how the Kurus honored their gods. "Is that…?"

"That is a god," Hidimbi said. She stepped off the couch and walked across the room, kneeling before the idol. "Ah. He didn't take my offering today." She regarded the untouched dumplings thoughtfully. "I wonder if I've done something to displease Him?"

"You did stalk me and spy on me when I was naked."

"That I did." She blushed slightly, although this caused her unearthly pale skin to take on more of a purple tint than not. Bhima wondered, morbidly, what color rakshasa blood was.

"Which god?" Bhima asked, suddenly very curious about that statue. When he looked at it, he could feel the devakin markings on his back tingling in a strange and not entirely unpleasant way.

"Ravana."

Bhima stared at her. "That's not a god. That's an asura."

"As the devas are to you," Hidimbi said, solemnly, "so are the asuras to the rakshasas. The devas created a universe and populated it with species made in their image. So the asuras created their own universe, on a higher plane, and populated it with rakshasas, who were created to be the superior species when compared to humans. And we are. That's why we can use maya. And also why we can cross the gate into the human universe, but humans can never cross the gate into our universe." She gestured with her hands, moving them up and down to illustrate. "Gates between the planes – or the universes, however you want to think of it – are one-way affairs. One can only cross down into a lower plane, never up into a higher plane than that which they were born into. The plane that humans claim as their universe is one of the lowest planes of all. You humans, you can only leave your own universe through your deaths. And even then, not always."

Bhima snorted. He had learned that the asuras created a dark world, that the rakshasas lived in that world, and that rakshasas sometimes crossed the boundary between worlds solely to prey on humans. Bhima had never heard this gillwash about the rakhshasa world being on a higher plane than the human universe, however. And he certainly couldn't swallow the idea of the rakshasas being _more advanced _than humans. "You can't be more advanced than me," he pointed out to her, indignantly. "You've got a dog's fangs, for the love of fish."

She looked amused by his protest. "Of course I have fangs. And? So?"

_So? _Bhima echoed the question in his head, but couldn't come up with a good answer.

"Listen," she said, regarding Bhima solemnly again. "You've been telling me about your world all day, now let me tell you something about mine. Your gods stay distant from the world that they've created, save for occasionally dropping children like you into the mix. But my gods? The asuras? They've been meddlers since before the dawn of time. Ravana even saw fit to conquer the entire universe of the Lower World that the devas had created, since _they _certainly didn't seem interested in it anymore. Or at least, he tried to. The devas finally did something when they sent an Avatar to stop Ravana. That's what Rama was – not a human, not a devakin, but a deva with a human's skin and something close to a human's mind. Ravana was not evil, nor was he good. He was just a fallen god. And through his mercy, Rama showed Ravana the path back to godhood."

Bhima was silent for a long moment, staring at her, frowning. Then he said, "All right. You listen. That's not how I learned it. From what I heard, the story ends when Rama cuts of Ravana's head and then burns his body. And then it's all sunshine and rainbows after that. Except that all of the Kishkindians go extinct. Or whatever. I don't know, I wasn't paying much attention in history class."

Hidimbi laughed. " 'Kishkindians'? You mean Vanaras?"

"Varwhatnow?"

"Oh gods. You people can't even get the terminology right." She laughed. Then she suddenly turned somber again. "All right, then. We'll try using your framework. I _know _that your version of the story doesn't actually end when Ravana dies."

"Yeah, well, I think there was something about Rama handing over the kingdom to Vibhishana, who was… also an asura," Bhima admitted grudgingly. "But Vibhishana broke up the kingdom and destroyed the asura seat of power. Then they went extinct. And all of the planets that Ravana once conquered are still independent today. Blah blah blah, the end. Now I'm dying to hear what kind of spin your people have put on that."

"Not 'spin.' Facts." She didn't seem angry at Bhima's surliness, however. "The asuras never went extinct. They just withdrew from the Lower World, and went back to doing what they do best – meddling in _our _universe." She laughed again. "It is strange, isn't it? How the same history looks completely different from two different vantage points."

Bhima shrugged. "I don't think that's strange. Doesn't that always happen?"

"You're right. It does." Something in her eyes softened. "It even happened in my own family." She glanced over at the statue of Ravana. "To some of us, Ravana is a god of peace. The message that he sends to his rakshasa children is that it is folly to believe ourselves superior to the creatures of the Lower World that the devas created. That we should abandon the idea that we were created to conquer the Lower World. That we should avoid the path of bloody conquest and instead pursue a life of truth-seeking and harmony." She tugged at her braid, a bit nervously. "But there are some rakshasas who worship Ravana for a different reason. There's a lot of… Mm. There's a lot of cultural and historical baggage on pretty much every inhabited planet in my universe. We're rakshasas, we _know _that our gods created us to be superior to humans. And some of us still believe that since humans are low animals, we are justified in…"

"Eating them?" Bhima finished.

"_I would never_," Hidimbi said, with sudden vehemence.

Bhima suddenly realized that the hair that had escaped her braid was standing slightly on end, and her eyes were glowing with some sort of angry inner light. She looked terrible, in that moment, terrible in the way that a rakshasa _should _look terrible. But there was something frighteningly beautiful about her anger. He stared at her, unable to help himself.

She calmed down a moment later, a visible ripple shimmering through her body as she got herself under control. "I'm sorry," she said. "This is something that I feel very strongly about."

"Well… I'm glad that you do."

She laughed at that. Bhima was relieved to see her smiling and laughing again. But his relief was quickly overpowered by the rumbling in his stomach. "Didn't you lure me here with the promise of food?" he asked.

"Oh. Yes. Of course." She stood up, walked over to the other side of the room, and began a series of complicated gestures with her hands. Suddenly Bhima smelled frying cheeses and roasted meats. He thought he might have seen the light of a fire flicker in and out of existence, but that might have just been his imagination. He could have sworn that there was nothing in that corner of the room but more stacks of books and boxes of discs; yet a moment later, Hidimbi was laying plate after plate of food on the floor in front of him, seeming to pluck the dishes out of thin air. "I've studied Kuru cuisine for as long as I've been here, but I'm still kind of new at actually cooking it myself," she said, apologetically.

Bhima stared at her, stunned. His brain was momentarily stuck on the cognitive dissonance between her use of the word "cooking" and the way that she had seemingly produced their dinner as if by magic. Then he looked down at the spread in front of him, and found himself grinning helplessly from ear to ear. The dishes that Hidimbi had produced were peasant food, nothing at all like the fine cuisine that Bhima had gotten used to in his adult life as a prince. But the dishes instantly reminded him of his childhood, the endless days he'd spent running wild in the forest, back when his brother and his father and his two mothers had been his entire world. Bhima felt his heart twist with a bittersweet combination of joy and longing as he looked down at a dish of roasted vegetables and remembered Madri taking his huge hands in her tiny ones and teaching him the proper motions for peeling a—

"Is it really that terrible?" Hidimbi asked, suddenly alarmed.

Bhima wiped a tear from his eye. "No. _No. _Not at all. It's wonderful."

She smiled at him, clearly flattered by his reaction. "Good. Good," she said. Then she dipped her claws into a bowl of stew and said, "Dig in."

Bhima readily did so, grinning the whole time. Here he was, sitting on the floor of a rakshasa's home and eating magical food with his bare hands, and the only thing he could really think about was whether he'd be able to pass off brushing his hand against hers as an accident or not.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FOURTEEN DAYS, AND NINETEEN HOURS AGO

When Bhima returned to his own campsite, the eastern horizon was already beginning to lighten. He stumbled into his tent, blearily, and flopped down on top of his bedroll. He would have closed his eyes right away, but unfortunately, he caught a glimpse of the flashing light on his comm right before he lost consciousness. Cursing, he reached for it and flipped it open. He had fifteen messages, all of them from Yudhisthira.

Bhima glanced at the time displayed on his comm, realized that Yudhisthira was already going to be awake, and decided to give him a call without bothering to listen to the messages first. Yudhisthira picked up on the first ring. "Bhima, you had better have a good reason for not answering--"

"I dropped my comm in the river," Bhima lied without thinking.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "So… How are you calling me now?"

"Oh. Uh… I fixed it?"

Another long pause. Bhima realized belatedly that Yudhisthira knew full well that he had no idea how to repair a damaged comm. _Oh, wait, I could have told him that I'd found a spare comm. That would have made more sense. We do have a spare comm in the emergency kit. Stupid Bhima. Stupid stupid stupid—_

"Anyway, I need you back here as soon as possible," Yudhisthira said, apparently deciding to ignore Bhima's transparent lie for the time being. "The Minister of Finance--"

"Wait," Bhima said. "I don't care what the new scandal is this time, whether it's that he molested his pages or is guilty of insider trading or--"

"He sold information to the Panchalans," Yudhisthira said quickly. His voice sounded more weary than angry. As usual. "_Military_ information, which he shouldn't have been privy to in the first place. And yes, Bhima, before you say anything, that _is _your area of jurisdiction."

Now it was Bhima's turn to pause, scrambling to get his thoughts in order. He wondered what Yudhisthira would have said if he'd found out that Bhima had spent the entire day yesterday talking about himself and his life to a curious rakshasha scientist, and that he might have spilled a state secret or two in the process. Well, Bhima figured, Yudhisthira would probably be angry. Unfortunately, Bhima could barely imagine what Yudhisthira looked like when he was angry, since Yudhisthira's usual reactions to things that would have angered others tended to range between weary sadness to deep crippling depression. Bhima bit his lip, rationalized that he didn't want to upset Yudhisthira any further, and silently vowed to keep his encounter with the rakshasa a secret. "Fine. I can be back by this afternoon."

"Thank you, Bhima," Yudhisthira said. He sounded deeply grateful. "I'm so sorry. I know that you wanted to stay longer out there."

"It's no problem. The forest will still be here ten years from now."

"I swear to you we'll take another camping trip _before _ten years are up. I promise. Just you and me."

"Yeah. Sure." Bhima had several days ago given up all of his delusions of getting Yudhisthira to relax and have a good time while they were cut off from civilization. But he wasn't about to start arguing about that now. "See you soon." He clicked off his comm, flopped back on top of his bedroll, and sighed.

The events of the past twenty-four hours kept playing in a loop in his mind. Opening his eyes to find that otherwordly creature leaning over him. Feeling charmed by her words and aroused by her stares, and curious enough to take her up on her daring offer of _talking _in exchange for a hot meal and a few answered questions of his own. Spending an entire day talking about himself, entranced by her visage and helpless to stop answering her nosy questions, not even minding the presence of the obvious collar-recorder that she had been wearing. That evening when she had invited him into her home, the strange wonders he had witnessed in there, the few tantalizing hints about her life and her world and her gods that she had dropped, the food, the way that they had kept laughing at each other's stupid jokes, the second course of food, the way that they had stayed together and babbled at each other into the wee hours of the night, the third course of food, the bright curiousity in her eyes and the utter lack of fear in her demeanor…

Her eyes.

Bhima rolled over on his bedroll and groaned. He'd been trying to ignore that odd feeling of mounting sexual tension that had been building in his belly ever since he'd opened his eyes and realized that an alien woman was staring at him in all of his naked, vulnerable glory. But now strange and unfamiliar thoughts of sex were crashing around in his brain with unbearable loudness. He felt like a hormonal thirteen-year-old again. Bhima had never been with a woman, had never even really been attracted to a woman before, and he certainly had a pretty clear idea that the reason for his current arousal was unusual at best, downright perverted at worst. What kind of a man got turned on by a stranger staring at him?! He laughed into his pillow, wondering what his righteous brother Yudhisthira or his morally pure Grandpa Bhisma would think if they knew that he was aroused by the thought of rakshasas staring at his bits.

Bhima rolled over on his back and stared at the top of his tent. If he wanted to make it back to Hastinapura by mid-afternoon, he needed to get moving. But he hadn't slept yet. And suddenly he didn't want to.

_Thank you_, Hidimbi had told him as she had walked him halfway back to his campsite. _Thank you for letting me interview you. _The moment that she had said the words, Bhima had understood that she was saying her goodbyes. _And for being a friend. I have not shared a meal with a friend in a long, long time. _She had smiled at him. _We are well-met, Prince Bhima._

At the time, he had been too half-asleep to feel sadness at their parting.

But now Bhima was fully awake again. He sat up in his tent, then quickly stepped out of it and into the brightening dawn. The chill of the morning air awakened him further, giving him new energy. Or maybe he had just reached the point of utter exhaustion wherein his body was actually being fooled into giving him an adrenaline boost. Bhima wasn't sure. But he did know that he had finally reached a decision. And he also knew that he was about to do something very, very stupid.

He stumbled through the forest, back in the direction of Hidimbi's campsite. He cursed himself for his stupidity but was still unable to stop himself. _You're thinking of your great-grandfather, _he told himself, _stop that, you stupid dolt! _But he couldn't. And he was also thinking that, other than his own two mothers, Hidimbi was the first woman he had ever met who hadn't been afraid of him. And it didn't matter that she wasn't human. As far as Bhima was concerned, she still counted.

"_Hidimbi!_" he roared, as he neared the area where her clearing should have been. "_Hidimbi!_" He wondered if she was asleep and concealing her campsite with maya. No, wait, that was stupid, of course she was asleep—

Suddenly the clearing opened up around him, the trees pulling back and the leaves above his head rustling with a breathy sigh. Hidimbi stumbled out of her tent, which hadn't been there a moment before. She blinked at him, drowsily, but her face suddenly lit up when she awakened enough to recognize him. "Bhima!" She addressed him by name, of course. Not _Your Highness _or anything silly like that. Just by his name.

Suddenly Bhima froze, unsure if he was really able to go through with what he wanted to do.

She blinked at him, more awake now. "Did you forget something?" she asked him.

"Yes," he said. He stepped toward her. He thought of Yudhisthira, waiting for him back in Hastinapura, and the scandal with the Minister of Finance, and all of the dozens of other things that he should have been worrying about at the moment. But he couldn't bring himself to worry. _Forget about Hastinapura, _he told himself, laughing inwardly. Forget about the palace and his princely duties and that whole messy lot of highly overrated civilization. He was back in the forest, back where he had spent his childhood, back where he could finally be free again. And he wanted to break some rules, throw some caution to the wind, and do something truly, painfully crazy. He had been born to smash things and break rules. Life as a prince was stifling him. He loved his brother Yudhisthira and he would happily submit to being whatever – whoever – Yudhisthira needed him to be. But Bhima still needed to go crazy sometimes. He yearned to be wild and unpredictable, like the wind that had created him. He wanted to act without thinking too much about the consequences. Like now.

Bhima placed his massive hands on Hidimbi's shoulders.

She glanced up at him, utterly unafraid, completely trusting. "Bhima…?" Her hair was a mess, her face a bit too shiny. She had at least changed clothes since Bhima had left her, and was now wearing a combination of simple cloth pants and a light, silky top that Bhima assumed were her pajamas. Noticeably, however, she had not yet washed up during the past twenty-four hours. Well, that was all right. Neither had Bhima.

Bhima drew her close to him, leaned down, and kissed her.

Her sharp fangs pressed against his lips, and her lips momentarily parted in surprise. Bhima held her for a moment, his eyes closed, afraid to see the reaction on her face, but relishing the taste of her mouth and the sound of her breathing. Her dark, full lips were just as soft as he had imagined it would be.

Bhima suddenly felt Hidimbi's hands wrapping around his waist. Her claws tickled against his back. She pressed into his kiss, pressing her body against his. But suddenly she pulled her lips away from Bhima and gasped, "Oh gods. This is the least ethical thing I've ever done. The _least _ethical!"

Bhima grinned at her. "Am I a bad person that the thought of that is turning me on?"

She didn't say anything in response to that, but rather, stood on the tips of her too-large feet and leaned up to kiss him again.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FOURTEEN DAYS, AND EIGHTEEN HOURS AGO

She leaned her head against his chest for a long time, saying nothing. Her whole body was draped languidly across him, her stomach resting against his stomach. She let herself be lulled by the rise and fall of his breathing, the sound of birds overhead, the warm rising sun against her naked body. She swirled her maya lazily with her mind, making sure that the forest floor was as soft and comfortable for him as a real bed would have been. Finally Hidimbi lifted up her head and gazed at his face. He was smiling contentedly at her. Then his smile faded a bit, and he asked, "Did I hurt you?"

She laughed. "You can't hurt me. I don't think you could if you'd tried."

He circled his huge arms around her, holding her down to him. "That's not true," he said. "I'm strong. Stronger than a hundred humans."

She reached out and brushed one of her claws tenderly against his face. "Were you afraid that you might lose control of your strength?"

"…I was."

"But you didn't." She lowered her head to his chest again. "It must be hard for you, though. Always having to be so careful. I can't imagine." She silently wondered if that was the explanation for the fact that he, despite bragging about the fact that he was twenty-one years old, had obviously still be a virgin as of an hour ago. He had been so confident when he had kissed her that Hidimbi had been honestly surprised to discover that beyond the kiss he hadn't been sure what to do next. But he had been passionate, and eager, and willing to follow Hidimbi's lead.

For a moment, Hidimbi's vision swam, as the true magnitude of what she had just done suddenly dawned on her. _I just fucked a human, _she thought. And then, _No, worse. I took his virginity. And he's a prince!_

Her mind raced. Didn't the Kuru royals have strict taboos about that sort of thing? Princes sleeping out of wedlock, that was. Let alone sleeping with rakshasas. Hidimbi shivered. Most rakshasa would have considered her union with Bhima nothing more than loathsome bestiality. She had a suspicion that the humans on Kuru would regard it in the same way.

"Is something wrong?" Bhima asked, sensing her sudden tension.

She lifted her head again, and stared at him. "Bhima…"

"Wait. Wait. I know what you're going to say." Bhima spoke quickly, as if he had been rehearsing this next part in his head. "Did I ever tell you about my great-grandfather Shantanu?"

"No, but--"

"He met a deva. One day in the wilderness. He just met a deva and they fell in love and lived happily ever after. They were Grandpa Bhisma's parents. So maybe you're thinking this is stupid and we don't really know each other and we're moving too fast, but listen, sometimes something just _happens _and you feel a connection with someone and you know that you're meant to--"

"Bhima. Stop." She slowly climbed off of him. "You're not Shantanu. And I'm not a deva." But one look at his face told her that he'd been thinking of that story for a long time, possibly since yesterday, possibly since the moment when he'd first laid eyes on her. He'd been thinking that the gods had given him his own happily-ever-after ending with his own magical maiden in the wilderness. Hidimbi could see that all written out on his face, and she felt her chest slowly beginning to tighten as she gazed at him.

What frightened her most was that she _could _read him so well. That between them there was already, as Bhima had put it, a deep connection. It had happened so fast and so suddenly, it was making Hidimbi's head spin.

Bhima sat up quickly. "No, listen to me," he said. So painfully eager. "I've got it all figured out. We'll go back to Hastinapura together. There's a rule that I can't get married until Yudhisthira is married first but we can _wait _until then, and anyway it won't be long now since Grandpa Bhisma keeps throwing women at him--"

" 'Wait'? What exactly do you mean by 'wait'?" Hidimbi crossed her arms over her bare chest. "Do you think, for even a moment, that you can go public with the fact that you've taken a rakshasa lover?"

"Well, no, but… You can make yourself invisible, right? Or make yourself look like a human? Don't all rakshasas have that power?"

"You're asking me to hide myself? For the gods know how long?"

Bhima suddenly seemed to deflate a bit, as if he were just now realizing what a horrendous thing he had so eagerly and unthinkingly asked of her. But he still pushed on ahead, gamely. "Maybe you don't need to _hide_-hide, I'll think of something, I swear, I--"

"You haven't asked me if I _want _to stay with you," Hidimbi interrupted him.

Bhima stared at her.

She stood up, brushed the leaves and grass off her bare legs, and tried her best to glare down at him. "I love to study your world, Bhima. But it's not my home. It can never be." She wanted to sound angry, she wanted to sound definitive about her decision. But she couldn't. The look on his face was breaking her heart. And she knew that she shouldn't blame him for his insistence that they stay together. After all, he was raised in a culture where a woman did not sleep with a man unless she intended to make their relationship permanent, and Hidimbi had been stupid stupid stupid not to have considered that when she had kissed him back.

Suddenly Bhima stood up and said, "If you want to study my world, then fine. Come back with me to Hastinapura." He was desperately reaching for a new approach now, and it was so painfully obvious. "I'll let you inside the palace. I'll show you all of our state secrets. You can learn all about how the royals live. You can even stalk Duryodhana if you want, and give him anal probes and perform experiments on him, if you want to, I'm sure he probably won't mind."

Hidimbi turned away from him, feeling her stomach clench with both longing and dread. The promise that he was dangling in front of her was tantalizing. The academic within her was already drooling at the prospect of getting an up-close look at the upper echelons of this fascinating human civilization. But the more cautious part of her brain quickly overrode that enthusiasm, reminding her of the reason that she'd been unable to approach Hastinapura thus far. "I can't come to your palace," she told Bhima. "There are too many devakin there. Their combined aura hurts me. It burns."

Bhima blinked at her, surprised. "Does _my _aura hurt you?"

"No. And that's because you're alone, and because I've spent enough time near you to build up an immunity. I also think it might be the reason that you started being able to see me – because as I was growing immune to you, you were growing immune to my illusions." She tapped her chin thoughtfully, suddenly distracted from her more immediate worries by the resurgence of her intellectual curiosity. "That still doesn't explain how you can understand my language, though."

"Yes, yes!" he said, latching onto her offhand musing as if it were a lifeline. "We still have to figure that out!" He reached for her, pulling her close to his body, enveloping her with his enormous arms. She didn't resist. "I can protect you from the other devakin auras," he said.

She shook her head. "No you can't. How?"

"I'll think of something!"

"Bhima--"

"I _love _you!"

Hidimbi closed her eyes and gave in to his kiss.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FOURTEEN DAYS, AND SEVEN HOURS AGO

Yudhisthira was angry that Bhima returned to Hastinapura so late – or at least as angry as Yudhisthira could be, which wasn't much. As usual, he seemed more weary and disappointed than anything else. Bhima sat through an emergency meeting with Bhisma's cabinet, tried not to fall asleep, and for once was happy enough to let Dusshasana take charge of the crisis.

It was late in the evening by the time that the situation was under control.

"I won't be joining you for dinner," Bhima said as Yudhisthira walked him back to his quarters.

Yudhisthira took one look at the dark circles beneath Bhima's eyes, then asked quietly, "Did you sleep last night?"

"No. I went night-hunting." Bhima grinned at Yudhisthira. "Stupid, I know."

"_Yes_, stupid. I told you when I left that I might need you at a moment's notice--"

"I'm sorry. I told you that I was sorry."

"I know." Yudhisthira rolled his eyes. "Shall I have the kitchen staff send something to your quarters?"

"Please." Bhima took his leave of Yudhisthira quickly. He rushed back to his own quarters, quickly banished his guards and servants, then closed and locked the door of his bedroom. He then collapsed against the door, sinking down the floor, exhausted. Hidimbi wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled his neck.

"Oh gods. Oh gods," she laughed, her breath tickling Bhima's skin. "I can't believe we got awaywith that!"

Bhima groaned. His whole body ached, but not in an entirely unpleasant way. "I cannot believe I let you talk me into that."

She laughed again. "You _did _say that you would protect me, right?" She kissed his cheek, and as Bhima felt her fangs pressing against his skin, his aches and pains vanished.

Bhima wrapped one arm around her. "I didn't know that you had that power," he said. "That's incredible." Ever since they'd arrived at the palace, Hidimbi had, as she had explained to him earlier, concealed herself within his "space," whatever that was supposed to mean. Hidimbi had tried to explain it in terms of atoms being mostly empty space, her ability to warp the space of his universe, and the way that Bhima's rakshasa-friendly aura would protect her from the burning auras of the other devakin in the palace. As far as Bhima understood, however, he'd basically been walking around for hours with a rakshasa hidden in his molecules. The experience had been weird and draining, but worth it, he mused, now that Hidimbi was whole again and they had their arms around each other.

"I have lots of powers," Hidimbi said, conversationally. Then she stood up, straightened up her clothes a bit self-consciously, and began walking around Bhima's room, her expression marveling at everything that she saw. "Wow. Wow! I can't believe I'm here." She pulled what Bhima assumed was some sort of recording device out of her shirt pocket, and began waving it around the room. "This is fantastic. This is the type of data that I never would have dreamt I could--"

"Are you seriously taking video of my room?"

"Seriously. Yes." She turned the recording device toward him – it looked strange and alien to Bhima – and squinted, peering at him through its lens. "Mm. You're sexy when you're exhausted. Want me to fix you something to eat?"

Bhima stood up slowly, stepping toward her. "I can think of something," he said, suddenly no longer tired.

He moved fast, and she did too; their kisses were hot and passionate as they whirled each other across the room. Hidimbi collapsed onto Bhima's bed with a laugh, then sat up quickly, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed, apparently surprised that Bhima hadn't flopped into the bed with her. Then she laughed again, delighted, as she realized that Bhima was kneeling on the floor in front of her.

Bhima kissed the inside of her thighs, nibbling at the cloth of her practical and astoundingly unsexy workpants. "So are you going to take off your clothes, or what?" he asked.

Hidimbi smirked at him, and suddenly his clothes vanished.

Bhima returned her smirk, unashamed of his nudity. "That's a dirty trick."

"One moment, darling. Do you think that I would be so cruel as to let you be the only naked person in this room?" She slowly, languidly reached up and began unbuttoning the front of her shirt.

Suddenly, there was an urgent, pounding knock at the door. "Your Highness!" one of Bhima's pages called. "Your Highness!"

Bhima stood up quickly, panicked. He glanced around his bed and the floor, then suddenly remembered why what he was looking for was nowhere to be found. "My clothes!" he hissed at Hidimbi.

Hidimbi glared in the general direction of the door, clearly disappointed at being interrupted. But, a moment later, Bhima's clothes were back.

"_Your Highness!_" More urgent pounding at the door.

Bhima swore and stumbled toward the door, wondering what sort of emergency was about to be dropped in his lap. In his head he had already imagined Yudhisthira standing on the other side of the door. He was surprised, however, to open the door and find Arjuna peering up at him instead.

"You're back!" Arjuna said, rushing past the page posted by the door and hugging one of Bhima's legs. Then Arjuna glared up at Bhima, squinting at him through his thick glasses. "You didn't come and see me when you got back."

"I was busy," Bhima said, scooping up Arjuna in his arms and laughing. "Blame Yudhisthira. He wouldn't let me leave." Bhima quickly closed the door to his room and surreptitiously glanced around; Hidimbi was gone. He briefly considered that she might have been making herself invisible, but then rejected that idea. He could see through her illusion of invisibility. She was just gone. Either because Arjuna's aura would have hurt her, or because she wanted to give Bhima privacy, or perhaps for some other reason. Bhima felt a nervous trill in his stomach, for a brief moment, but then the moment passed. Hidimbi would be back, of course. He had no doubt of that.

Arjuna was already babbling happily away as Bhima carried him over to a couch, filling Bhima in on all of the excitement that he had missed during his vacation in the woods. "And then Grandpa Bhisma made me write four whole pages in Panchalan and I couldn't do it but Durmada translated some sentences for me and then I handed it in to Grandpa Bhisma and he said that it said 'I have a tiny tiny penis' over and over again and I cried but I think Duryodhana beat up Durmada so that's okay and then Mom yelled at me but she didn't yell for long because Nakula turned my Goobi into a rocket and launched it at--"

"Wait. Your what?"

"My Goobi," Arjuna said, staring at Bhima as if he couldn't believe how dense his brother was being. Arjuna made a gesture with his hands, and Bhima realized that he was talking about the plastic elephant toy that he had used to cling to when he was younger. At the ripe old age of ten years old, however, Arjuna already considered himself far too adult to play with toys anymore, and had several years ago packed away Goobi and most of his model cars, hoverers, and jumpers in a chest in his room. It hadn't taken his younger brothers long to find that chest, however. Over the past couple weeks there had been several incidents involving either Nakula or Sahadeva subjecting one of Arjuna's old toys to some sort of aerodynamic experiment or another. And as Arjuna was apparently far too stupid to either change the lock on his toychest or appoint more loyal (or possibly just plain smarter) guards to protect his quarters, the experiments simply continued. Bhima figured that if Goobi had recently met its demise, however, then the little monsters were surely scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of Arjuna's toys; that plastic elephant was perhaps the single least aerodynamic thing that Arjuna had ever owned. Perhaps the twins had already destroyed all of Arjuna's model jumpers and hoverers, and had now been forced to move on to less launchable toys.

"And now Nakula and Sahadeva are both grounded," Arjuna informed Bhima, emphatically.

Bhima fought the urge to laugh, because he knew that grounding either of the twins was a worthless gesture. It didn't matter that they were only six years old. They already had an uncanny knack for escaping from their quarters when they weren't supposed to. Or, when they got really desperate, they would sometimes resort to blowing up something or setting fire in their own rooms in order to escape. It had happened twice before.

Bhima's youngest brothers were unsettling in many ways. Their strange, pale-skinned appearance, their eerie adult-like intelligence, and their casual disregard for authority, safety, and common sense had made them the subject of much whispered gossip around the palace – and much fear, as well. Bhima felt sorry for the twins, though. He knew what it was like to be feared.

"I missed you lots," Arjuna said, futilely attempting to wrap his scrawny arms around Bhima's thick waist.

"I missed you too," Bhima said, wrapping his arm warmly around his brother. "But right now I'm very, very tired."

"Oh. All right." Arjuna wriggled out of Bhima's arms and off his lap. "If you're tired, then you should go to bed," Arjuna berated Bhima, firmly.

"I will, I will." Bhima ushered Arjuna back toward the door. He opened the door and gently pushed Arjuna toward the page waiting outside. "I'll see you tomorrow, Pumpkin."

"I am not--!"

But Bhima didn't hear the rest of Arjuna's protest, because he slammed the door shut as quickly as he could.

He turned around just in time to see Hidimbi falling out of his bed – _literally _falling out of his bed, her mass realigning itself as she extracted herself from the molecules within which she had been hiding – and clutching her stomach, laughing uncontrollably. "_That_'_s _your little brother?!"

Bhima felt an instant prickling of defensiveness, on Arjuna's behalf. "What's so funny?"

"His _aura_, oh God, his _aura_ – it felt like a hurricane! When he was still outside your room I was expecting him to be _huge _like you, but then this scrawny little kid walks through the door and--" She laughed again, struggling to stand up. "I've never seen a human that small with such an aura!" She managed to stop laughing, then looked up at Bhima seriously. "Is he a host?"

"Uh… What?"

"A host. Does he have a devaweapon?"

"The priests think so, but we haven't seen it yet."

"Ah. That would explain it." She sat down on Bhima's bed. "You family is beautiful."

Bhima was immediately struck by her words – and pleased. He had been hoping that she might say something like that. "Thank you," he said, sitting down beside her, taking her hands in his. "I'm sure they'll love you too."

Hidimbi's eyes widened. "Bhima, I didn't mean it like--"

"No. I mean it. I'm serious. We should--"

"No, Bhima! You're crazy! You can't possibly be thinking about--"

They kissed again, both him and her at the same time, helpless enthralled by each other.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FOURTEEN DAYS, AND FIVE HOURS AGO

She watched his face while he slept, the peaceful smile on his face, the way that the shadows pooled across his dark skin. Hidimbi felt a deep sense of peace and happiness as she laid stretched out beside him, aware that her own face was mirroring his contented smile, and unable to stop herself.

That was a problem.

Hidimbi turned her head, and glanced toward a mirror mounted on the other side of the room. It was too dark for her to see her own reflection. Maybe that was a good thing.

"I'm a terrible person," Hidimbi whispered into the mirror. It was a mercy that the darkness of the room prevented her from having to face the reflection of her own accusatory stare.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIVE DAYS, AND SIX HOURS AGO

Things fell into a pattern. Hidimbi soon discovered that she did not have absolute freedom to move around the palace, as the combined auras of the devakin living there had saturated the space with an energy that came close to physically burning her. But inside Bhima's quarters, she was safe. His aura was somehow different, and it made the space that he inhabited different, too. Hidimbi was also safe inside Bhima's body, hiding herself in the empty spaces between his atoms, although doing so for a prolonged period of time easily exhausted the both of them.

Hidimbi could only move about with freedom when Bhima was near her side, protecting her with the simple proximity of his strange aura. And that was how they spent most of their time together.

During the day, Hidimbi stayed in Bhima's quarters, resting, gathering up her strength. At night, they snuck around the palace and the surrounding grounds, as Bhima took Hidimbi anywhere and everywhere that she requested to go. Hidimbi recorded video of both the palace kitchens and its dining halls, of its garages where a small fleet of autos and hoverers were stored, of small meeting rooms and grand assembly halls, of the libraries and art museums owned by the royal family, even of a hospital further into the city. Hidimbi concealed herself with maya the whole time, and often extended her illusion of invisibility to Bhima as well; his large frame and heavy bulk ensured that Bhima was not exactly a master of the art of quiet tiptoeing.

At night, they shared Bhima's bed. Sometimes they made love. Sometimes they were too tired to make love.

One morning Hidimbi woke up and realized that she never wanted to wake up without him beside her again. And that was a problem.

That night Bhima returned to his quarters late. Hidimbi was sitting on top of his bed, cross-legged, waiting for him. "Bhima, I can't stay like this forever," she said as soon as she saw him. "I'm a prisoner here."

He didn't seem at all surprised to hear her words. "I know," he said. He sounded deeply sad. He sat down beside her on the bed, and took her clawed hands in his. "I don't want to keep hiding you forever, either." He looked at her solemnly. "So let's stop hiding."

Hidimbi felt her stomach sink. "What do you mean?"

He was silent for a moment, as if gathering up his courage. "I want my family to meet you," he finally blurted out.

Now Hidimbi's stomach wasn't so much sinking as it was slowly trying itself into a painful knot. "Oh Bhima, no--"

"No, you don't understand. It will be all right. Yudhisthira will accept you, and if he does, then everyone else will, and--"

"No no no no, Bhima, are you even listening to yourself?! If anybody found out that you were sleeping with a rakshasa, you'd be ruined, Yudhisthira would be ruined, your whole family would be disgraced--"

"I won't let that happen," Bhima said, firmly, as if by sheer force of will he could make it so.

"Bhima," Hidimbi said, very quietly. "I can't… I can't stay in the Lower World forever. There's kind of… back home, there's kind of a war going on. There's a war between those of us who want to live in peace with the Lower World, and those of us who still believe that the rakshasas were meant to conquer it." She rushed to spill out her explanation as fast as she could. "Look, I'm on the good side. I told you I'm on the good side. And I can't turn my back on them. I owe them so much, more than you can understand. And – and I'm not saying this just to be egotistical, but – But my work that I do, it's important for our cause. I'm using science to prove that humans are self-aware, like us. And I need to keep doing that work. I can't quit. I have to keep fighting, I have to keep--"

"I understand," Bhima said. He looked Hidimbi squarely in the eye and said, "You want peace between humans and rakshasas? You want to fight for that cause? Then fine." He squeezed her hands. "Just by being together we'd be fighting for that cause. We could be an example. We could be a… uh… a radical statement. That's what Yudhisthira would call it. We could start a revolution."

The look on his face was breaking Hidimbi's heart. "No," she said again, firmly. "Bhima, you know that your brother Yudhisthira can't afford to start a revolution. He'd lose his chance at the throne. And as for me, well, you don't even know. You don't even know what I've been through, or what I have to go back to. You don't know what you're asking me to sacrifice by staying here!" Her voice was rising in pitch, but she couldn't stop herself. "And how would that even work, huh?! Even if I weren't hiding I still can't move around in this palace without you, I can't even stand too close to your brothers, I can't live like an independent person at all, I'd be chained to you for the rest of my life!" Now there were tears spilling down her cheeks, but she didn't care. Her voice was still steady, at least. "I love you, Bhima," she said. "I love you and I wanted to cherish the time that we could spend together. But you and I both knew from the beginning that I would have to leave eventually. Stop pretending like you didn't know. Please. Just stop."

He was speechless. Slowly, he let go of her hands.

_I'm so stupid, _she thought, watching his face crumble, helpless to look away. _I'm so stupid. So selfish. I was the one who was actually pretending. I was pretending that I didn't know how seriously he was taking our relationship… I was pretending that I didn't understand what sharing a bed meant to a Kuru prince…_

Suddenly, Bhima stood up off the bed. "I need a moment," he said, his voice husky. He walked out of the bedroom. Hidimbi watched him go, and made no move to stop him.

Fortunately, he returned few moments later. His eyes were slightly red and his face looked puffy, but he seemed to have gotten himself under control. He stood in front of Hidimbi, gathering himself. For a moment, Hidimbi was afraid that he would drop to one knee and declare his undying love for her, that he would swear to devote himself to her forever, that he would make more empty promises about how he was going to single-handedly make everything work out.

But instead, Bhima said quietly, "If you have to leave, then let's end it on a good note." Amazingly, he managed to smile at her. "There's one last place that I wanted to take you to. Will you come with me?"

Hidimbi realized that he was offering to take her on one final date. She stood up off the bed, took his hand in hers, and nodded.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIVE DAYS, AND FIVE HOURS AGO

At that height, the sharp wind blowing from the ocean was chillingly cold. Hidimbi shivered, then remembered to warm herself with her maya. She sent a few tendrils of maya toward Bhima, warming him too. He held her close, wrapping his enormous arms around her body.

They walked silently around the open deck of the observation tower, slowly taking in the nighttime cityscape to the west, and the liquid black open ocean to the east. There was no moon that night, and no stars; the matte black sky threatened rain. Hidimbi found the sight of the dark, seething ocean strangely beautiful.

Hidimbi rested her head against Bhima's chest. "You're sure that nobody will come up here?"

"I'm sure. I told you." Bhima led her back inside, through the sliding glass doors that surrounded the telescope room. "This thing is horrifically outdated. Grandpa Bhisma wants to tear the whole tower down and replace it with a new telescope."

Hidimbi eyed the enormous piece of machinery in the center of the tower. It was a pity, she thought, that they wouldn't be able to look through the telescope that evening. She wanted to see what the stars looked like from Kuru. But the telescope had been powered down a decade ago, and according to Bhima, turning it back on would suck up such a massive amount of energy from the palace generators that somebody would surely notice. Still, whether the old telescope was useless or not, the view from its tower truly was the best view in the palace. Bhima seemed quite proud of the way that he had gotten an access key from one of Yudhisthira's ministers, and Hidimbi couldn't blame him for his pride in that difficult accomplishment.

Bhima led her across the tower, toward where whatever astronomers had previously used the telescope had thoughtfully positioned a couch and some chairs overlooking the ocean view. They sat down on the couch, and Hidimbi let Bhima wrap his arms around her, pulling her close. She rested her head against him, and stared out the glass windows surrounding the tower, at the inky black ocean spread out in front of them.

"It's not fair," Bhima said. "If the stars were out…" He sighed. "It's a much better view when it's not cloudy."

"That's all right." Hidimbi curled her body against his. "This is still wonderful. Just you and me and the ocean." It was as good a spot as any, she figured, for their farewell sex. She wanted to leave Bhima with one last perfect memory, after all.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. But that was fine with Hidimbi. She felt perfectly comfortable, being that close to Bhima.

Eventually, rain began to splatter against the windows. Within moments, the drizzle became a downpour; the view outside the windows vanished into a wall of water, and the roar of the rain hitting the roof of the tower filled Hidimbi's ears. Suddenly the inside of the tower felt a lot warmer and closer than it had a few moments ago. Hidimbi laughed low in her throat as Bhima began to kiss her neck.

They made love slowly, savoring every moment of it. It took Hidimbi a deliciously long time to build up that intense, hungry feeling in her groin; but eventually she was close, very close, moving her body in an increasingly frantic rhythm against his, clawing at his shoulders, tossing her head back and moaning uncontrollably, feeling her entire body squeezing and trembling, moments away from release—

Suddenly, Bhima froze.

Hidimbi grasped at him, feeling a sudden bolt of his shock and horror coursing through her, killing her libido instantly. "What? _What?!_" Then she turned her head, following his gaze, and saw the pair of huge golden eyes staring at the both of them.

Oh, no.

Bhima was immediately attempting to extract himself from Hidimbi. She practically leapt off him, then stumbled naked for a few steps, her sex-fuzzed brain struggling to weave the maya necessary to return both her and Bhima's clothes from where she had sent them. With another thought, Hidimbi cloaked herself in at least a passable illusion of a human woman. By then, the little boy was already running, of course; but fast as he was, Hidimbi's mind was faster. She pulled at the molecules in the air, conjuring a sudden wind strong enough to send the boy tumbling back into the heart of the tower. He cried out in protest as Hidimbi's wind pushed him into an inelegant somersault that landed him right at the base of the couch.

With another thought, Hidimbi attempted to turn on the lights in the tower. But she couldn't; there was no working power source for her to draw from. With a sigh, she conjured up a glowball and released it above Bhima's head. It didn't provide much illumination, but it was enough for them both to see Nakula's enraged face staring up at them from the floor.

Nakula stood up and dusted himself off angrily. "Bhima you are gonna be in _so much trouble_!" he snarled. "Wait 'till Mom finds out you have a girlfriend." Amazingly, the little boy did not seem to notice – or care about – either the inexplicable wind that had prevented him from bolting, or the glowball hovering above Bhima's head. "And you were fucking her! You _know _you're not supposed to fuck anybody until stupid Yudhisthira gets married first."

Bhima did not seem at all surprised to hear such shockingly adult words spilling from his six-year-old brother's mouth. Rather, he leaned over Nakula, looming in as threatening a manner as he possibly could loom, and asked, coldly, "And what, exactly, are _you _doing here? I know for a fact that you're supposed to be in bed right now. And I also know for a fact that this entire wing of the palace is _strictly _off-limits to children."

Nakula didn't even flinch. He was clearly not intimidated by Bhima's threatening stature. "I was _going _to scope the telescope for parts," he said. He produced a bolt-puller from where he had stuffed it down his pants and flourished it proudly. "I was just going to take it apart and look, I wasn't actually going to take any parts tonight," he said, as if this somehow proved him innocent of any crime. Then he narrowed his unsettlingly golden eyes, looking at Bhima in a shrewd, calculating way that Hidimbi had never seen any child do before. "But, you know, I don't care about the telescope anymore. I really should tell Mom about you and your girlfriend."

"You wouldn't dare," Bhima hissed.

"I would and you know I would."

Bhima stared at his little brother for a long, long time. Finally, he breathed out long and slow through his nose. Then he said, "What do you want?"

Nakula studied his fingernails. "My silence doesn't come cheap, you know." Hidimbi was beginning to find it frightening how much like a tiny adult he behaved, as if he weren't a child at all.

"I know it doesn't," Bhima said. Then he squatted down on the floor, which still didn't quite bring him down to eye level with Nakula, but it was close enough. "All right. There's a Sakata-class transport ship in the hangar right now that's scheduled to be stripped down next week. I can give you and Sahadeva authorization to take first pick among the recycled materials."

Nakula regarded Bhima evenly. "Sahadeva and I already bribed our way into first pick. We have the authorization on file. You should have noticed that by now, you idiot." He looked at his fingernails again. "Offer me something that I can't get on my own, or you're just wasting my time."

Hidimbi stared in open horror at the little monster standing in front of Bhima, too shocked to say anything. But Bhima, at least, appeared to be used to dealing with Nakula. "P-rocks," Bhima said, calmly. "I can get you P-rocks. I'm one of only four people on this planet who can authorize a P-rocks shipment."

For a brief moment, Nakula seemed to brighten up in an almost child-like display of enthusiasm. But the moment passed, and he was just as suddenly back in control of his eerily adult-like façade again. "Interesting," he said. "I've always wanted to try some experiments with P-rocks… How much can you offer me?"

"A quarter mass," Bhima said, quickly. "Any more and I won't be able to tell a convincing lie about it."

Nakula nodded somberly. "You have a deal, then." He mimed stitching up his lips with his finger. "My lips are sealed."

"They had better be," Bhima said, darkly. "Because you know what I'm going to do to you if you go back on your word…?"

Nakula rolled his eyes. "Rip out my tongue, gouge out my eyes, cut off my nose, pull off my fingernails, cut off my fingers and feed them to me." He recited this gruesome litany as if he had already heard it a thousand times before.

"No, actually," Bhima said. "This time I think I'll promise you a hearty disemboweling. A human being can survive with only a small fraction of their intestines intact, you know."

Nakula pondered this thoughtfully, as if carefully considering the question of whether his brother was serious with his threat. He seemed to decide that that was indeed the case. "I understand," he said.

Bhima held out his hand. "Then we have a deal?"

"Oh gross, I'm not going to touch you. You were just _fucking_, weren't you?" Nakula turned to Hidimbi, addressing her for the first and last time. "Nice to meet you," he said, noncommittally, and clearly not meaning a word of it.

Hidimbi swallowed her anger. "I can't say the same," she couldn't restrain herself from snapping.

Amazingly, however, this caused Nakula to regard her with what might have been an inkling of respect in his eyes. "Oh, you're not bad at all," he said. Then he turned back to Bhima. "Pity you can't keep her."

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIVE DAYS, AND FIVE HOURS AGO

The downpour was brutal, but thanks to the power of Hidimbi's maya, the two of them were dry. The rain, at least, ensured that they would be left alone – and well-concealed – during their final farewell.

They stood in the middle of the garden, and despite Hidimbi's maya preventing the rain from touching him, Bhima's face was far from dry. He wiped at his tears again, then somehow managed to laugh. "You were totally speechless," he said.

"What?"

"When Nakula was there, you were totally speechless. That's the first time I'd ever seen you speechless." He managed to laugh again, through his tears. "Nakula has that effect on people." Then he fell silent, apparently having run out of witty observations with which to lighten the mood.

Hidimbi slowly wrapped her arms around him. Her mind was racing frantically, trying to think of all of the things that she wanted to say to him, wondering if she should apologize for how things had ended, wondering how she would ever live with herself after breaking his heart, wondering what she could possibly say to make this less painful for him. Then she realized that the best thing that she could do for him was to get their goodbyes over with as quickly as possible.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. Unoriginal, but it worked. "I love you," she said. Her voice was breaking now, but she didn't care. "And I'll never forget you." Still trite, she knew. But it was the truth.

He grasped at her arms, too tightly. "Will I ever see you again?" he asked, still desperate for one last thread to cling to.

"It would be better – for you and me both – if you didn't."

He trembled, but did not avert his eyes. He nodded slowly. "I understand." Then he whispered, "I love you too."

She reached up and brushed his face tenderly with her claws. "Goodbye, Bhima," she said. And before he had a chance to say anything in response, she was gone.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIVE DAYS, FOUR HOURS, AND FIFTY-FIVE MINUTES AGO

The moment that Hidimbi's maya vanished, the rain soaked him instantly.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, TWO DAYS, AND TWENTY HOURS AGO

There was a familiar routine to throw herself into, once she was back on board the _Pantha. A_nd for that, Hidimbi was grateful.

"Do you think you recorded enough video?" Garimi asked as she hefted one of the many boxes of discs that Hidimbi had recovered from Kuru. "You're going to make Bahula and I watch and catalogue all of this, aren't you."

"No, I'm going to make _you _watch and catalogue all of it," Hidimbi said, handing another box off to Bahula, her second assistant. "Bahula is going to be transcribing all of my voice recordings."

"Joy," Bahula said, his voice muffled by the enormous pile of boxes that he had stacked in his arms.

Hidimbi laughed, and prayed fervently that her laugh sounded genuine. She had kept a small portion of her recordings separate from the material that she was handing off to her assistants. Eventually, she figured, one of them was going to ask her why her video and voice recordings stopped nine days before she had left the Lower World. Hidimbi still had some time to think of a plausible excuse, however.

Hidimbi knew that if anybody – _anybody _– found out that she'd had relations with a human, she'd be finished. Even here, among the community of human-positive rakshasas that lived on board the _Pantha_, she'd be finished. Hidimbi knew full well that even though most of her comrades supported the notion that humans were self-aware and therefore should not be hunted, many of them still did not consider humans to beings as evolved as the rakshasas themselves. To many rakshasas, the idea of relations with a human was nothing more than bestiality. And anyway, Hidimbi figured, even among the few who _didn't _think that humans were lowly beasts, they would still be disgusted by Hidimbi's extremely unethical behavior. What with sleeping with one of her research subjects, and all.

They would be right to be disgusted.

Hidimbi left Garimi and Bahula to sort the rest of her boxes, and quietly ducked back into her private quarters. She flopped down in her own bed for the first time in a long, long time, and sighed contendedly. The Lower World was an endless source of fascination for her, but still, it was good to be home. To Hidimbi, the _Pantha _was her truest home, in every sense of the word.

Hidimbi then sat up on the edge of her bed, waved her hands, and quickly materialized the box of recordings that she had hidden from her assistants. The voice recordings and videos from her last nine days on Kuru could never be seen or heard by anyone. Hidimbi held the box in her hands for a moment, contemplating whether it would be best to destroy it right away.

That truly would be the best course of action. And yet, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the box. "I'm not ready." The pain was still too fresh in her heart. But, looking down at that box, Hidimbi could already see her future unfolding ahead of her. The pain would dull with time, as would the memories. Eventually she would move on. Eventually _he _would move on, too.

Someday they wouldn't miss each other anymore.

It was a bittersweet thought, but Hidimbi knew that such was love. Bhima had not been her first love. She had fallen in love, lost, and moved on before. She knew that she could do it again.

_When I know that I don't miss him anymore, _Hidimbi vowed to herself as she whisked the molecules of the box into oblivion again, _that's when I'll destroy those recordings for real._

_

* * *

_

FOURTEEN YEARS, SIX MONTHS, TEN DAYS, AND FOURTEEN HOURS AGO

This couldn't be happening.

"Well, there's no mistaking it," the doctor said, happily. "You are definitely pregnant." He glanced quickly at the readouts scrolling across the screen of his notepad, and continued, "We can start taking scans as early as within two weeks." Then he looked up, and saw the expression on her face. "…Ma'am?"

Hidimbi blinked, trying in vain to wipe the expression of shock and horror off her face. "I, uh…" She blinked, trying to gather her thoughts. "This is impossible," she said.

The doctor immediately looked sympathetic. "Well, even the most reliable methods of birth control do sometimes--"

"No," Hidimbi said, emphatically. "I mean this is impossible because I haven't slept with a man in over a year."

The doctor twitched. "Surely you're mistaken."

"How would I be _mistaken _about something like that?!" The truth, however, was that Hidimbi was deliberately omitting one important fact. She _had _slept with someone, and not too long ago at that. But that someone had been a human. And it was impossible for a human and a rakshasa to create a child together. It was completely, utterly impossible.

Either way, Hidimbi hadn't slept with a fellow rakshasa for over a year, and that was the only fact that counted.

Wasn't it?

Hidimbi buried her head in her hands. "No no no no no no," she said. "This can't be happening."

The doctor was silent for a long, long moment. Then he asked quietly, "Ma'am, would you like me to contact the authorities?"

Hidimbi froze.

"In cases like these," the doctor said, still in that quiet voice, "usually the explanation is some sort of non-consensual violation of--"

"You mean a rape," Hidimbi said. It wasn't unheard of among the rakshasa, of course. Among a species that could cast illusions and bend space and time to their will, an unscrupulous few had of course, over the centuries, perfected techniques for taking advantage of women and leaving them without any memory of any violation having ever occurred. "But nobody can get past _my _defenses," she told the doctor. And it was true. She had, after all, spent decades honing her self-defense skills against one of the most powerful rakshasa of all.

"Ma'am," the doctor said again, "I really think you should contact the authorities."

Hidimbi squared her shoulders. "Actually, you're right," she said. "I need to speak with Lady Jara."

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, SIX MONTHS, TEN DAYS, AND THIRTEEN HOURS AGO

The first thing Hidimbi thought when she saw Jara was that the other woman looked weary. Exhausted, and bone-deep weary. There were dark circles under her eyes. But Jara still wrapped her arms around Hidimbi and welcomed her warmly. "Tell me the truth," Jara whispered into Hidimbi's ear. She wasted no time getting to the point.

Hidimbi extracted herself from Jara's arms and sat down in her usual seat. "I took a human lover," she said. "And now I'm pregnant."

Jara nodded, calmly taking in Hidimbi's words in, displaying not a single sign of surprise. "Mmm. Somehow, I always had pegged you for the type."

"J-Jara!" Hidimbi spluttered. "Don't you understand how serious this is?!"

"I do," Jara said, quietly. She sat down beside Hidimbi, taking the other womans' hands in hers. "Believe me, I do. But you need to take this one step at a time. So, first order of business: Are you sure, absolutely certain, that the human is your child's father?"

"Absolutely," Hidimbi said quietly. "We can do genetic testing later, but… Absolutely. There's no other way."

"Are you going to keep the child?" Jara asked.

Hidimbi squeezed her eyes shut for a long, long moment, considering all of the possibilities. "Yes," she finally said. Then she opened her eyes and said, "I have to tell Bhima. Him. Er. His name was Bhima."

Jara frowned. "I think it might be best to wait," she said, slowly, carefully. "In case the child doesn't survive."

Hidimbi felt her heart clench in her chest. But Jara's words were true. Up until that morning, Hidimbi had considered the idea of a half-human, half-rakshasa child to be an utter impossibility. The cold truth was that it might still _be _an impossibility; she had no idea what sort of health complications her child would be facing, either in the womb or in the dangerous years immediately after he or she was born.

"I'll tell Bhima later," Hidimbi confirmed, for Jara's sake. Then she added, "Which begs the question… Who else can we tell?"

Jara frowned deeply, then winced and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "I don't know," she said, wearily. "You were always the diplomat. I'm just a fighter. I don't know how to handle--"

"You're not just a fighter, you're our _leader_. We all follow you."

"I may be the figurehead, but you've always been the heart and soul of our side." Jara kissed her oldest, dearest friend on the cheek. "This child could be a symbol, Hidimbi. An important symbol. For peace."

Hidimbi silently thought that she wasn't so sure. Jara had no formal title, neither queen nor minister, but she was in every sense the truest leader of the rakshasa society that had formed on board the _Pantha_. She was also the _Pantha_'s greatest military leader, defending the spacefaring city from strikes led by the hostile rakshasa groups who sought to eliminate the blasphemous, human-sympathetic way of living of the _Pantha_'s people. Hidimbi, on the other hand, was the soft arm of Jara's rule. Hidimbi published her scientific studies and her literary essays, attempting to slowly chip away at the deeply-held beliefs of generations of rakshasas. Hidimbi was responsible for winning more and more hearts to Jara's side. But even Hidimbi was afraid of how she – and her child – would be treated, once the rest of the _Pantha_ knew that they had been tainted with human blood.

"Whatever happens," Jara said, "You can't keep your child's lineage a secret. If she's half-human, that will show up somehow, right? You'll need to explain something eventually. I think that we should be honest about this from the beginning." Jara nodded to herself, quietly. "We can't afford to be seen as dishonest or secretive about anything. Neither of us can." She touched Hidimbi's cheek. "And if anybody says anything nasty about your or your kid, I will _personally _rip their heads off. Personally."

"Thank you." Hidimbi stood up. Then she looked down at Jara, who was still sitting, and said, "You look terrible. Is something wrong?"

Jara closed her eyes and said quietly, "Bhankor fell. Hidimba's forces took the gas planets and the moons last week. They executed Bhankor's queen today. It was all over the consoles."

Again, Hidimbi felt her heart clench in her chest. "But we were going to make port at Bhankor," she said.

"I know. _I know._" Jara shook her head. "We'll have to find another safe port now. And we only have enough food supplies for another month or so in jumpspace." Jara looked up at Hidimbi, and Hidimbi saw how deeply worried she was. "Your physicist friends keep telling me that the universe is expanding. But I look around, and all I can see is that it's shrinking. There are fewer and fewer systems where I can land the _Pantha_. We have thousands of souls on board this ship, and they're all depending on me to find them a safe harbor. Things might start getting harder, Hidimbi. Leaner and harder."

"I know," Hidimbi said, echoing Jara's words back at her. The maya that Hidimbi, Jara, and other rakshasas had mastered was bound by stricter rules in their own universe than it was in the Lower World. Organic material – the building blocks of food – was particularly difficult to create or manipulate. Simple carbons could be woven from maya, but sugar was another matter entirely. Likewise with proteins, lipids, and most vitamins. Rakshasa had to buy, hunt, or grow their own food. And the fuel that powered their jumpdrives had so far proven impossible for any rakshasa to replicate with mere maya. The asuras, in their wisdom, had created a universe without shortcuts for their rakshasa children to inhabit. In the Lower World, rakshasas who had sufficient command of maya could have created food or jumpdrive fuel out of thin air. In the _real_ universe, however, Jara had to constantly worry about finding safe ports where the _Pantha _could secure precious food and fuel supplies.

"Hidimba is closing in on us," Jara said, angrily.

Hidimbi turned and left, unable to say anything else. Any mention of her brother Hidimba always managed to send her heart spiraling into a black, wordless rage. Hidimbi decided that it was best to excuse herself before she started clawing holes in Jara's furniture.

* * *

FOURTEEN YEARS, TWO MONTHS, TWENTY DAYS, AND SIXTEEN HOURS AGO

"Aaaaaaaand there it is," Garimi said, pointing to the tiny little dot of darkened film on the scan readout floating in front of Hidimbi's eyes. "Congratulations. It's a boy."

Bahula squinted at the scan readout. "How can you tell?"

"That's a penis, Bahula." Hidimbi winced again as the cold scanner pressed against her bare stomach. "Garimi, I thought you were done…?"

"Sorry, sorry. I'm still new at this." Garimi mercifully lifted the scanner off Hidimbi's belly. It had been decades since she'd had any medical training, but now, as the number of trained doctors on board the _Pantha_ dwindled, people like Garimi, despite having taken up other careers, were increasingly being called upon to volunteer for medical tasks. Hidimbi feared that soon she would lose her best apprentice to full-time nursing duties.

"Well," Bahula said, squinting at the scan readout, "for a bunch of smeary pixels, he sure looks cute."

"You have to name him now," Garimi said, "now that we know that it's a him."

"Ghatotkacha," Bahula suddenly said.

Hidimbi laughed. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. I mean, look at him." Bahula pointed to the scan readout. "Look at the shape of his head. It's all pot-like."

Hidimbi laughed again. It was a good name, she thought. Innocent and charming. She was silently, deeply grateful for Garimi and Bahula, for how understanding both of them had been since the moment that they had found out the truth about Hidimbi's child, and for the way that they had never judged her for it. Hidimbi thought it would be fitting to take Bahula's suggestion for her son's name, if only to honor him in a small way. "I like it," she said. She closed her eyes, and rested her hand on her swollen belly. "I can't wait to meet you, Ghatotkacha."

* * *

THIRTEEN YEARS, TEN MONTHS, TWENTY-TWO DAYS, AND NINE HOURS AGO

Ghatotkacha was born after a long, hard labor. Hidimbi held her son in her arms for the first time afterward, exhausted and thrilled at what she had done. Ghatotkacha looked every bit the picture of a perfect little rakshasa baby boy; there was no outward sign of his human blood visible anywhere on his body.

But the genetic testing that had been done a month before his birth confirmed the truth: Ghatotkacha did, indeed, have human genes in his genetic code.

Two of the nurses on duty in the maternity ward refused to touch him.

But Garimi, at least, made a deliberate show of holding the baby in her arms and cooing at him. "Look at his wittle nose! Whosa cute widdle nose? Whosa whosa?"

"You're making me sick," Hidimbi said weakly. She leaned back against the pillows propping up her back and said, "I have to go back to the Lower World. Soon. As soon as possible."

Garimi frowned. "Why?"

"I _have _to tell Bhima. I'm a terrible person. He doesn't even know that he has a son yet."

"You're in no condition to stand up, let alone make a gateway, let alone drop into the Lower World," Garimi lectured. "And Ghatotkacha might not…" She trailed off, frowning. "He might not… Uh…"

"Might not what?"

"Well, we don't know what will happen to him inside a gateway," Garimi said, carefully. "Come on, Hidimbi. You're not stupid. You must have thought about this before."

Hidimbi clenched her eyes shut and tried _not _to think about it. Rakshasas could pass through the gateways that connected their world with the Lower World, but humans couldn't. It was as simple as that. Humans rather messily, gorily couldn't. Hidimbi remembered being trapped in the Lower World, and being forced to watch her brother gleefully executing humans by tossing them into the gateways that he created, laughing like a madman at the entertaining explosions of blood and gore that resulted.

The question of whether a half-human, half-rakshasa could pass through a gateway unharmed was a question that Hidimbi did not know the answer to.

"We'll have to do this scientifically," she said.

And so they did. Weeks later, Hidimbi had Bahula make a gateway for her to experiment with. She dropped her son's first claw-clippings and a few of his hairs into the space that marked the boundary between her world and the Lower World, and watched with dismay as they exploded into little puffs of dust.

* * *

SIX YEARS, ONE MONTH, NINE DAYS, AND SIXTEEN HOURS AGO

"You have nothing to be afraid of," Hidimbi said as she bent down and adjusted the buttons on Ghatotkacha's shirt. Judging by the way that he rolled his eyes in response, Hidimbi realized that she was probably saying it more to reassure herself than to placate him.

"I _know_, Mom," he said. Then he kissed her cheek, and an instant later had wriggled out of her grasp. He was four steps away from her when he said, "See you later!" In an eyeblink, he was already on the far end of the hallway and effortlessly absorbed into a conversation with his classmates.

Hidimbi straightened up, and tried to ignore the pop in her back. She watched the scene on the other end of the hallway for a moment, tiny rakshasa and naga heads bobbing up and down as they babbled at each other, circles of children forming and re-forming as cliques of friends were decided for the remainder of the year. Hidimbi hadn't exactly had a normal childhood, and she'd never even attended a public school before she got her first university degree. She'd been afraid that if the school system really was as socially cutthroat as she'd heard, then Ghatotkacha wouldn't stand a chance, particularly since the fact that he had human genes was widely known and discussed.

But Hidimbi's fears had been unfounded. In his first year at school, Ghatotkacha had effortlessly established himself as what Garimi referred to as a "social butterfly." He had a disarming charisma that quickly won over even his classmates who had been cautioned by their parents to avoid him. Hidimbi remembered agonizing over compiling a guest list for his sixth birthday party, as the boy had insisted on inviting nearly every child in the school, because he considered _all _of them to be his friends.

"Eventually we have to stop staring at them, right?"

Hidimbi turned her head toward the stranger who had suddenly addressed her. He was a naga, smiling wryly as his eyes tracked his own child through the crowd. "Ah, look. She's making the 'ugh-Dad-go-away!' face already."

Hidimbi laughed. "Mine's already ignoring me."

"You're Ghatotkacha's mother, right?" He bowed his head to her. "Hi. I think we met on Parents' Night last year, but I didn't introduce myself. I'm Moti."

"Hidimbi."

"I know. I've read your writing."

She grinned at him. "Oh look, I have fans." And he wasn't wearing any of the jewelry, or sporting any of the tattoos, that indicated that he was a married naga. Interesting.

"I'm not sure if sharing an ideology can be considered the same as being a fanboy, but…" He paused for a moment, as if gathering up courage. "I think it's about time we left the kids alone already. Can I treat you to lunch?"

Hidimbi gauged him carefully for a moment, then smiled at him. "Absolutely."

Garimi had warned her that having a child would lead to pick-up attempts at the most unlikely times and at the most unlikely of places. But Hidimbi figured that Moti looked on the level, and it had been far too long since she'd last exercised her flirtation skills.

Or maybe he genuinely did want to discuss the rakshasa civil war with her, and only the rakshasa civil war.

Hidimbi hoped, however, that that would not be the case.

* * *

TWO YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, FIFTEEN DAYS, AND EIGHT HOURS AGO

"Hey Mom, Kera and I are going over to Ti's house," Ghatotkacha said, breezing through the front door of their apartment just long enough to throw his schoolbooks aside and maya himself a snack, "and Ti's dad is going to make us dinner. Cool?"

Hidimbi looked up from the journal that she was reading. "That's fine, kiddo. But you still have to be back by twenty hundred hours."

"Got it. I'll be back." He was gone an instant later.

Hidimbi watched the front door close behind him, and muttered a prayer of thanks for the fact that her son had so many close friends. He was happy. And that was good.

Outside the bubble society of the _Pantha_, the world was growing smaller and more hostile. More and more planets were refusing the _Pantha_ portage. There were fewer and fewer places for them to return to, to stock up on vital food, fuel, and other supplies. Less food was being distributed to the families on board, and that made things hard. Even worse, every time the _Pantha_ left jumpspace, they picked up more refugees – fellow rakshasas and the occasional naga, who dared to oppose the human-eaters, and who were subsequently cast out of their homes and families. Even as Jara's ideological rebellion swelled in numbers, their position was weakening.

There was talk of crossing the _Pantha_ over into the Lower World, in its entirety. There might be more opportunities for food and supplies down there. But Hidimbi worried that she and her son wouldn't be able to stay on board the ship if it truly attempted to go through a gateway. Ghatotkacha would surely be killed during the crossover.

Still, the kids were largely sheltered from the war that Jara, Hidimbi, and the other elders of the _Pantha_ concerned themselves with. They knew that there was a war going on, but they didn't know how dire the food situation on board the _Pantha_ sometimes got. They didn't know what Hidimba and his followers were capable of. They didn't know that the _Pantha_ only kept a few outdated fighters in its hangar bays, and that those fighters had already scrambled twice in the past year, when the _Pantha_ had emerged from jumpspace only to find hostile forces waiting to repel them from a previously safe planet.

The _Pantha_ was a big ship. It was easy for a select group of leaders to keep facts like that away from the general public. Too easy.

And suddenly, Ghatotkacha was back again. He poked his head through the door – literally, using his maya – and said, "Oh yeah, I forgot. Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Did you and Mr. Moti break up for real-real?"

Hidimbi was taken aback for a moment, then she sighed. _Break-up _seemed like the wrong word for what mature adults like her and Moti had done. They had dated steadily for several years, and she had enjoyed his company. Ghatotkacha had grown quite close to Moti's daughter, Kera. But recently Hidimbi and Moti had both realized that they were treading water, so to speak, and had mutually decided to move on. "Yes, Ghatotkacha. We're not dating anymore."

"Oh, okay. Because you know, like, Kera just asked me to the Starlight Dance. And I wanted to make sure that we weren't going to end up as stepsibilings or anything, because, you know, that would have been really weird and gross and stuff."

"Well, then." At least he didn't seem too upset about the fact that his mother was officially broken up with the person who had been a father-figure to him for many years – and a pretty good father-figure, at that. "Are you going to miss Mr. Moti?" Hidimbi asked.

"Maybe if Kera and I get married, I won't have to," Ghatotkacha said, stepping fully back through the door. When he saw the look of horror on his mother's face, he laughed and said, "Kidding, kidding!"

"Good, because you are _far _too young to be thinking about--"

"So when am I going to get to see my real dad?"

The question hung in the air between them.

"You know," Ghatotkacha said, "my human dad."

Hidimbi closed the journal that she was reading, and sat up a bit straighter in her chair. "Ghatotkacha, we've discussed this. You can't pass through the gate to the Lower World. Your father can never enter this world. You can't--"

"But _you _can go to the Lower World any time that you want," Ghatotkacha interrupted her. He met his mother's gaze with an easy, calm determination. "So, so! I could record a video, or send him some holograms, or maybe write him a letter or something, and you could give it to him, and then he could send me something back, and then we could, um. We could talk to each other. I… I really want to talk to him. Even if just once." Ghatotkacha took a trembling breath. "I mean, why hasn't he even sent me a letter or anything?"

Hidimbi folded her hands together, hoping that he wouldn't notice the way that they were trembling. "Because he doesn't know."

"Doesn't know what?"

"Ghatotkacha, I haven't spoken to your father since I left him." Truth. "I wouldn't even know where to find him in the Lower World anymore." A lie. It wasn't like a Kuru prince would be hard to find, but Hidimbi figured that the lie might make the truth go down a little bit easier. "A long time ago, your father and I made a very, very difficult decision. I had to leave him. And he was very, very hurt. So I promised that I would never contact him again. And then I had to make another very, very difficult decision. I knew that if I ever found your father again, if I ever told him that he had a son that he could never see face-to-face or hold in his arms, it would break his heart. That's the type of person your father is, Ghatotkacha. If he was told that he could never meet you, it would have destroyed him."

Ghatotkacha stared at her with wide eyes.

Hidimbi clenched and unclenched her hands, waiting for him to say something. Well, there it was. She'd spoken to him as an adult, and she'd laid out the very adult-level truth on the table. Now all she could do was wait and see how he would react.

Unfortunately, Ghatotkacha was not yet an adult. He trembled from head to toe. "You never _told _him?!"

"No. I can't."

"My dad doesn't even _know that I exist?!_"

"Ghatotkacha--"

"How could you DO this to me?!" he cried out, his voice full of adolescent melodrama. "All these years I thought that maybe someday I could at least get a letter or something from him, and you--"

"I never said--"

"_Why didn't you tell me earlier?!_"

"Ghatotkacha, if I ever said or did anything to lead you to believe that your father knew--"

"Shut up! _Shut up!_" Now came the tears. "I'm going to Ti's!" He whirled around and flounced dramatically out the door before Hidimbi could say or do something to stop him.

Hidimbi sighed. She had faith that eventually, her son would understand. But for the time being…

She grimaced, mentally preparing herself for several weeks' worth of teenaged temper tantrums.

* * *

ONE YEAR, ONE MONTH, TWO DAYS, AND FIVE HOURS AGO

The virus was bad, albeit not the worst one that Ghatotkacha had ever contracted. Still, he was laid up for days in bed, his fever and his maya running wild. Hidimbi found it difficult to care for her son when items around their apartment kept slipping into molecular ether or bursting into flame. She tried to cook a stew for him, but stuffed animals from his bedroom kept spontaneously materializing inside the cooking pot. Finally, Hidimbi went to his room, sat down beside his bed, took his hand, and said, "I'm taking you to the emergency room."

"No no no no, Mom, I'm okay--"

"You just ruined Mr. Sniffles." She held up the stew-soaked toy.

Ghatotkacha sat up in bed, alarmed. "I did that?"

"I'm going to call Bahula, he can clean this thing down to the molecular level," Hidimbi said. "But you and I are going to the emergency room."

An hour later they were back home, but Ghatotkacha still refused to take the medicine that he had been prescribed. "It'll give me weird dreams," he said.

"Oh. Hey. I know." Kavi sat down beside Ghatotkacha on his bed, casually draping his arm around the feverish boy. Ghatotkacha didn't refuse him. "But until your brain stops melting, kiddo, you've got to just relax and take a nap. If you keep vomiting maya like this, you'll drive your poor mom crazy."

"I know. I'm sorry." Ghatotkacha looked down at his claws, which he had recently painted in black and red, a fashion statement which his friends at school had begun imitating merely days later. "Hey. Um. Are you going to marry Mom?"

Kavi froze. He looked to Hidimbi, who was leaning against the doorframe of her son's room, watching them. Ghatotkacha looked to his mother, too. Finally, Hidimbi returned her son's steady gaze and said, "Ghatotkacha, we've actually been discussing that. But we don't know yet."

Ghatotkacha nodded, sensing that he was being – at least for the moment – treated as an adult. And quite obviously pleased about it. "All right. Give me those sleeping pills."

Kavi hesitated for a moment. "Ghatotkacha, how would you feel about me and your mom getting married?"

"I think it'd be pretty great."

"That's good to hear." Kavi finished giving Ghatotkacha his medicine, then quietly left the room.

Hidimbi waited until she sensed that her son was asleep, and said, "You know, I haven't committed to anything yet."

"I know."

"We're in the middle of a war."

"I know."

"Jara might have to move the _Pantha_ into the Lower World. The whole ship."

Kavi stared at her, stunned.

"We're running out of food," Hidimbi said, "and we're running out of safe ports. Jara and I have been discussing this for a while, now. At least in the Lower World, we'd be able to find food and supplies. You know that Jara is more than powerful enough to construct a gate large and stable enough for this entire ship to pass through. But if that happens, Ghatotkacha and I will have to leave. Because Ghatotkacha can't stay on board this ship if it's traveling through a gate. Do you understand?"

Kavi swallowed nervously. "This is something that you're not supposed to be telling me, right?"

"Right. It's all strictly confidential. But you need to know about it sooner rather than later." Hidimbi turned away from him. "If it comes to that – if we have to move the _Pantha_ to the Lower World, at least on a temporary basis – then Ghatotkacha and I will stay in the Kanu system. We can disappear into the deserts on Kanu Two without anybody noticing or asking questions."

"So I'll go with you!" Kavi blurted out.

"But we need you _here_," Hidimbi said. "You're the only weaponsmith left on the _Pantha_. And we're in the middle of a war," she repeated.

He reached for her hand. "And if we don't have to move the _Pantha_ into the Lower World? If you don't have that excuse to leave me…?"

"It's not an _excuse!_" she snarled at him, instinctively extending her claws. Then she grit her teeth and forced herself to draw back her hand before she hurt him.

"I'm sorry," Kavi said.

Hidimbi tried to hide the sudden trembling in her hands. Where had _that _come from? She normally didn't have much in the way of a temper, let alone a hair-trigger temper. "No, I'm sorry," she said. "It's just… Things have been very stressful lately." Well, that was an understatement. The _Pantha_ was in more dire straights than Kavi could know, and Hidimbi, Jara, and mere handful of others had been shouldering the weight of that secret for as long as they could.

Once upon a time, Hidimbi and Jara had dreamed of a revolution. Once upon a time, they had begun to see that dream take shape. But in the years since then, their revolution had been beaten down, beaten back, and nearly destroyed by their enemies. Now their whole universe had turned against them, and soon they might very well have to flee into a lower dimension, like dogs with their tails between their legs.

Hidimbi wanted Kavi to stay with her. She needed to lean on him. Or maybe, in all honesty, she just wanted to cling to someone.

And that wasn't a good thing. It was being unfair, both to him and to her.

Kavi touched her arm one last time, gently. "Call me if you need anything," he said.

"I will."

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

SIX MONTHS, TEN DAYS, AND NINETEEN HOURS AGO

The spaceport on Kanu Two's eastern continent – one of only two on the planet – was little more than a cleared landing area and a tiny communications shack.

Ghatotkacha was trying to be upbeat about things, though. "I mean, look at all this sand!" he exclaimed, desperately grasping for any small thing to be enthusiastic about. "Sand is… um, sand is great! The molecular structure of it is so much fun to play around with!"

Hidimbi laughed and put her arm around his shoulder. He smiled up at her, gamely. She knew that he was being strong for her sake. She wanted to tell him that she was proud of him for being so mature about this. Maybe later.

Garimi set down the last of their luggage on the ground, then straightened up, and faced Hidimbi for the last time. "We'll comm you the minute that we cross back over," she said. "We're only staying in the Lower World long enough to replenish our food and fuel supplies."

"I know. _I know._" Hidimbi didn't need Garimi to reassure her. She and Jara had been the architects of this plan, after all. Hidimbi glanced to her left, where the lone rakshasa manning the communications shack was watching her through a window. He smiled and waved at Ghatotkacha. Ghatotkacha grinned and waved back. Hidimbi felt relieved. This one rakshasa and this one rakshasa alone sympathized with Jara's cause; he had promised not to betray the fact that Hidimbi and her son had landed on Kanu Two to anyone who might come looking for them. Although the idea of anybody _thinking _to look for anybody else on Kanu Two was somewhat laughable.

Garimi turned and headed back toward her jumper. "Stay safe," she said, already stepping back into the cockpit.

"All of you, too," Hidimbi said.

"Ravana's blessings," Ghatotkacha added, folding his hands in prayer.

Hidimbi stood with her son, and the two of them watched silently as Garimi's jumper roared to life and lifted off into the sky. Then they lifted their luggage and treaded out into the sandy dunes. With the supplies that she had brought and the maya at her fingertips, Hidimbi could easily create a comfortable hideout for the two of them. It was just like being back in the field again, doing her anthropological studies in the Lower World, constructing a base of operations whenever and wherever she pleased.

Hidimbi smiled at herself, despite everything. Nostalgia always seemed to strike her at the oddest times.

"Think of something funny?" Ghatotkacha asked her.

"I was just thinking that this is kind of an adventure," Hidimbi said.

"Oh, it totally is."

They continued through the sand in a comfortable silence.

* * *

SIX MONTHS, SEVEN DAYS, AND THIRTEEN HOURS AGO

Ghatotkacha commanded powerful maya, but lacked precise control over it. He helped his mother break down the matter in the desert around them and reconstruct it into a comfortable home, but he had trouble creating a refined final product. His attempt at a couch dissolved when Hidimbi tried to sit on it, and a couple of blankets that he created had the strange habit of slithering around across the floor whenever they weren't in use. But Ghatotkacha laughed at his failures and moved on.

"Look!" he exclaimed, as sand turned to glass in his hand. "It makes all sorts of awesome shapes!" He pulled and pushed the liquid glass with his claws, forming a pretty spiral shape. "I could make a gift for Rana," he mused out loud.

"Rana?" Hidimbi stared at him. "I thought you were dating Ces?"

"Ces and I broke up, like, two months ago," Ghatotkacha said. "Sorry, forgot to mention that."

Ghatotkacha spent the days practicing his maya, making glass trinkets for his girlfriend, and trying to pretend that he wasn't lonely. Hidimbi knew that he was used to being surrounded by his many friends. The isolation of the desert was harder on him than he was letting on.

Hidimbi had to walk nearly half a day to reach a town with a supermarket. There was matter interference in the dessert that prevented her from sliding through space. As a further inconvenience to Hidimbi, the currency used on Kanu Two was, like all currency in her brother's empire, maya-locked so as to prevent counterfeit copying.

Into the town Hidimbi went, and she returned to her son late in the evening. Ghatotkacha was waiting for her with warm tea and freshly-created blankets. "These ones aren't all squirmy!" he declared proudly.

"Good job, kiddo. And I brought something for you to read." She handed him some magazines that she had picked up at the supermarket. Three were digital and loaded into a cheap, disposable screen reader. The fourth was physical, printed on paper, and cheap in more ways than one – just celebrity gossip.

"Ooooh, thanks," Ghatotkacha said, grabbing the paper magazine immediately.

"You can kill your brain cells reading that crap," Hidimbi said, "or you could use it as fuel for more maya practice."

Ghatotkacha grinned at her. "Why not do both?"

"Why not indeed."

"Seriously. Like even you wouldn't admit that…" He squinted at a name printed in a photo caption. " 'Coraldor' is hot." He showed her the photo in question. "Pretty good-looking for a naga, right?"

"Right. Sure." Hidimbi laughed. "I don't waste my time fantasizing about those things. But I'll be sure to let you know the next time I get a chance to _actually _date a multi-billion-credit movie star."

Ghatotkacha lowered the magazine. "But you dated a human _prince _once, didn't you."

Hidimbi's laughter died in her throat. She suddenly couldn't tell whether her son was still gently ribbing her, or genuinely trying to hit her where it hurt. "That's in the past," she said quickly.

"Oh. I know. In the past," Ghatotkacha echoed her, his voice carefully neutral, his face unreadable. "But what about right now? He's still my father and he's still a prince. And hey, you know what, my uncle _is an emperor._"

Hidimbi froze. "Excuse me, what?"

"My uncle. Emperor Hidimba."

"_No!_" Hidimbi hissed, suddenly grabbing her son's arm. "No, Ghatotkacha, _no! _He is _not_ an emperor. He is _not _your uncle. He is _not _my brother and you will never, ever, _ever _call him those things in front of me _ever _again, do you hear me, young man?!"

"Ow!" Ghatotkacha tried to pull away from her. "Y-you're hurting me!"

Hidimbi let go of him and drew back her hand, horrified. "Oh, no… Oh, Gatu, I'm so, so sorry…"

Ghatotkacha looked up at her, looked her directly in the eye, and said, "I forgive you. And I'm sorry. You're right, I shouldn't have mentioned him."

Hidimbi suddenly wondered why her son _had _mentioned his loathsome uncle. It had come completely out of nowhere. They had just been arguing about Ghatotkacha's father, and then all of a sudden, Ghatotkacha had mentioned his uncle…?

Something didn't make sense. There was a connection that Hidimbi was missing.

She'd _told _Ghatotkacha, with full honesty, all about the deeds of her brother Hidimba. Every child on board the _Pantha_ was taught about Hidimba. He was as integral to the history lessons that they learned in school as was Ravana or Vibishena. Ghatotkacha _knew _how evil his uncle was. Or at least, he was supposed to know.

_My uncle is an emperor._

Why would he suddenly say such an awful thing?

Hidimbi swallowed. She wanted to ask Ghatotkacha directly why he had just mentioned her brother. But, at the same time, she was loathe to pursue the subject any further. Just thinking about Hidimba was enough to make her want to retch. And she didn't want to start an argument with her son, not when it looked like he was already prepared to forgive and forget.

So Hidimbi swallowed her worries and said, "All right, Ghatotkacha. Let's just forget about this, all right? Be a dear, help me put away these groceries."

"Are you ever going to find my dad again?" Ghatotkacha suddenly asked, bluntly. "Are you never going to tell him about me?!"

"Ghatotkacha, we've discussed this--"

"Yes, we have," he said, setting aside his magazine and his tea, standing and drawing himself up to his full height. When he faced her, he was nearly at eye level with his mother. "You explained to me your reasoning. And I love you, Mom," he said, "but I can't agree with you about this. I'm thirteen years old now, and I think that I deserve to have my own say, too. And I want to send a message to my father."

Hidimbi wondered how long he had been rehearsing that speech. It certainly sounded rehearsed. But that didn't mean that it was any less genuine or heartfelt. "Oh, Ghatotkacha," she said. "You're right. You are thirteen years old. And extremely mature for your age, young man, and I'm so very proud to be able to say that to you. But--"

"_But. _Of course. There's always a 'but'." Suddenly Ghatotkacha didn't sound quite so mature anymore.

"Ghatotkacha, please. We don't need to get into this right now. This is the last thing we need."

"Yeah. You're right," Ghatotkacha suddenly said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up again, it just… I'm sorry." And just like that, he was grinning at her again. "Did you bring back any fruit jelly? What kind? No wait, don't tell me, lemme guess."

In retrospect, Hidimbi figured that she should have been suspicious, not relieved, when Ghatotkacha had backed down from their impending argument so quickly. It wasn't like him at all.

* * *

SIX MONTHS, SIX DAYS, AND TWENTY HOURS AGO

In her dream, she was back on board the _Pantha_. Moti stretched out beneath her, warm and welcoming, his skin smooth beneath her fingertips, impenetrable to her claws. They moved with each other, slow and sweet, and he brushed her neck with his lips. She whispered something perverted, her voice low and husky, and he laughed. She pouted, pretending to be insulted. He quickened his rhythm inside of her, and she was unable to pout for much longer.

Hidimbi awoke gradually, letting the sweetness of the dream linger in her mind. Ah, what had brought _that _on? She really wondered about that, as her subconscious mind normally wasn't nearly as pleasant when she was under stress. Then Hidimbi remembered the silly magazine photograph of that naga movie star, the one that Ghatotkacha had shown her. Of course, she thought, her lips curving into a smile. All handsome naga men inevitably reminded her of Moti.

Hidimbi rolled over in her bed, then sat up. She realized that she could see light filtering into her bedroom, through the curtain that marked its entrance. But it was the middle of the night. Was Ghatotkacha awake already? Or _still _awake, rather. Hidimbi stepped out of her bedroom and found her son sitting on the floor in the common space of their temporary home, weaving sand and glass and maya together in his hands.

"Can't sleep?" Hidimbi asked.

"Mmm. I'm kind of thinking about something."

"Is it the type of something that you can talk to your mother about?" Hidimbi tried.

"Maybe. You might get angry."

Hidimbi sat down in front of him, and looked him squarely in the eye. "I promise to listen to you, Gatu," she said. "But if you're about to tell me that you did something shameful, I can't promise not to get angry."

Ghatotkacha rolled his eyes. "It's not about me."

"Then what is it?"

"I want to ask you about Hidimba," Ghatotkacha said.

Hidimbi nodded slowly. Her son had not used the word _emperor _and had not used the word _uncle_, either of which would have been loathsome for her to hear. But just her brother's name, well, that was a different story. The name was ugly, but powerless. Hidimbi nodded again, then said, "Ask away."

"Is he really as powerful as they say?" Ghatotkacha asked. "Like, he has maya so strong that he can do whatever he wants, just like a god, or something?"

Hidimbi furrowed her brow, carefully considering her response. She didn't like to speak about her brother, but Ghatotkacha's worried question deserved an honest answer. She and Ghatotkacha were stuck together on one side of a terrible war. Ghatotkacha had every right to ask about the rakshasa who was for all intents and purposes his enemy. Hidimbi felt that she could speak about her brother only in the context of discussing a common enemy with a close ally. Well, that was all right, then. "First of all, Gatu," she said, "Hidimba is no god. He may be powerful, but he is mortal, and he has his weaknesses. Only the asuras are eternal and omnipotent. Only they are our gods."

Ghatotkacha said nothing, but set down his half-finished glass project, and listened intently.

"Hidimba's maya is potent," Hidimbi went on, "but not omnipotent. It took me a good two decades to do so, but even _I _was able to learn how to undo his manipulations. The way that he uses maya is somewhat unique, but it can be decoded and broken down, just like anybody else's maya."

"But that was, like, a long time ago, right?" Ghatotkacha asked. "The last time that you fought him."

"It was."

"So what if he's gotten more powerful since then? What if he just kept training himself? What if, if like he found us or something, what if you couldn't fight back against him anymore?"

Hidimbi stared at her son. "Gatu, what are you talking about?"

"Like… Like maybe he's looking for us, or something." Ghatotkacha looked away from his mother. "Because we're his family."

"_He is not our family._"

Ghatotkacha sighed. It was a strange, weary sigh. Hidimbi realized that it was the _I-knew-you-were-going-to-say-that _sigh that she herself had sometimes used on Moti, Bahula, and Kavi.

"I'm sorry, Ghatotkacha," Hidimbi said quickly. "Are you really worried that Hidimba might be searching for us?"

"…It's a possibility, isn't it?" Ghatotkacha said, somewhat slowly, as if he were carefully choosing his words. "I was just thinking. You know. If Hidimba ever really did try to hurt us, I dunno if I could stand up to him. You know. Because they say that he's so powerful and all. But I was thinking, too, that maybe if he found us he wouldn't actually try to hurt us."

"What?!"

"I told you. Because we're his fa--"

"Ghatotkacha, _stop_." Hidimbi forced herself to take a deep breath before she screamed at her son. _Do you know what he did to ME?! To ME, his own SISTER?! _She wanted to scream at Ghatotkacha. She wanted him to know the reason that she couldn't bear the thought of Hidimba being her _family. _But of course, she couldn't do that. She couldn't tell her son the complete truth. He didn't have to know, and it would be better if he didn't know.

So Hidimbi went for the safe truth. "Hidimba is a murderer," she told Ghatotkacha. "A mass murderer. Ruthless, corrupt, and pure evil. He kills for sport, Ghatu. He kills for _fun_. Of course, if he ever found us, he would try to hurt us. He doesn't care about us being his family. He doesn't care about anything like that. He lies, and he lies, and not a word that he says can ever be trusted. But don't you worry. Don't you worry about him, Ghatotkacha. That beast will never find us here, and even if he did, your old mom can still kick his ass all the way back to Bhankor. I'll protect you, kiddo. I swear I will."

Ghatotkacha smiled, as if relieved. Then he picked up his glass trinket again. "I guess you're right," he said, pulling and twisting the glass with his maya.

"You should go to bed," Hidimbi said.

"All right." Ghatotkacha stood up and stretched. "Um… Thanks for listening, Mom."

"Thank you for talking to me." She looked away from him sheepishly. "I'm sorry that I lost my temper."

"I love you, Mom." Ghatotkacha stepped back into his bedroom.

"Love you too, Ghatotkacha. Always."

* * *

SIX MONTHS, TWO DAYS, AND SEVEN HOURS AGO

Ghatotkacha was gone.

Hidimbi searched frantically around the home that they had created, but he was gone. Most of his possessions were gone, too. There was every sign that Ghatotkacha's things had been neatly packed away, and no sign of a struggle. Hidimbi was panicking. Had he run away? What _for_?! She knew that Ghatotkacha was bored, she knew that Ghatotkacha was unhappy always having to hide himself within their dessert home, but she also knew that Ghatotkacha was far too mature and level-headed to pack up his things and run away because of sheer boredom.

Hidimbi cursed at herself. She'd only been in town for half a day. And then she'd come back to discover that her son had vanished.

Hidimbi realized that she was clawing at a couch. _Stop, _she told herself. _Take deep breaths._

Ghatotkacha had packed up his things. That meant that he had also likely left a message for her.

Hidimbi forced herself to calmly search through the boxes of datadiscs in the house. Most of them were still blank. She tried the remaining ones in her handheld console, one by one, but none of them contained any message from Gatochaka. Then she went back into his room, and searched some more. She finally realized that there was a handwritten note left on the only table in his room, held down by one of Ghatotkacha's glass paperweights. Hidimbi must have looked straight at it at least ten times before she finally realized what it was. Slowly, forcing her hands not to tremble, she held the note in her claws, and read it.

_I love you, Mom. _The very first line of the note, the very first line that Ghatotkacha had written. The most important message that he needed to convey to her. Then, the second most important:_ Please don't be angry at me about this._

_There's a way for me to cross into the Lower World. _

_Hidimba did it. He made it. He's so powerful that he really can do anything._

_He did it for me. I refused to call him an emperor, I refused to acknowledge him as my uncle, but he still did this thing for me because he still loves us even though he's all twisted up inside._

_He found me in the dreamspace. He got into my head when I was sleeping. I'm sorry. I could have told you but I didn't. He knows that we're on Khanu Two. He found out from me. He never tried to trick me or deceive me. The first time he appeared in my dream, he told me who he was. I got really scared. I told him to go away. But he said that he wasn't going to hurt me because in the dreamspace he can't hurt me. He said that he heard me praying. And I was praying, every night. I prayed to Ravana so that He would maybe make a miracle and help me pass through the gate. Just once. I just wanted to meet my father once. Ravana didn't answer my prayers, but Hidimba did. He said that he knew a way to get me through the gate. He said that he would do this for me because I'm his family and he is obligated to me. He said that he was angry that I wanted to go through the gate in order to meet a human. But he also said that he wasn't going to stop me because I'm thirteen years old and I can make my own decisions about what to do once I'm through the gate. I think because he said he was angry, that's how I knew that he was telling the truth about everything. If he was lying to me or tricking me, I don't think he would have said that he was angry at me._

_I saw Hidimba three times in the dreamspace. Only three times, I promise. I didn't want to tell you because I know that you will never trust him and so I had to keep this a secret or else I would never be able to go through the gate. I don't trust him completely and I know that he's evil. I feel bad about accepting his help. Maybe this makes me a bad person. I don't know. What I do know is, Hidimba promised me a chance to go through the gate, and I'm going to take that chance._

_I will find my father._

_I will come back to you. I don't know when, because I don't know how long it will take me to find my father._

_If I'm a bad person for letting Hidimba help me, then I accept my sins as my own and I will do penance to atone for them later. And you can punish me when I get back. But right now I just want to find my father. Any punishment will be worth that._

_I know that Hidimba doesn't deserve to be an emperor and I know better than to call him my uncle. I know I'm not supposed to trust him, and I don't trust him any more than letting him send me through the gate. I love you lots and I'm coming back. Promise._

He hadn't signed the note.

Hidimbi set the note back down on the table. Took a deep breath. Then another. Then another.

Her rage swelled; her maya stormed; the home that she and her son had created turned to dust around her. And from deep within her came the scream that she could no longer hold back, that she no longer wanted to hold back.

"___!_"

* * *

TWO MONTHS, TWENTY-FIVE DAYS, AND TWELVE HOURS AGO

They had no warning. She came out of nowhere, and was unstoppable. Her claws flashed, ripping open their necks and their chests. Her maya screamed through them, boiling their blood and bursting their hearts. Dozens of rakshasa threw themselves at her and she destroyed them with a thought. She was the sister of the mad rakshasa emperor, after all. She shared his blood and his power, and now she had her rage driving her, too.

The final corpse collapsed in front of the mad emperor's throne. And then there was just Hidimbi left, covered in the blood of the slain, staring up at him with murder in her eyes.

Hidimba stood up from his throne, slowly. Calmly. He gazed down at his sister imperiously. "These were my best bodyguards," he said, as if only slightly vexed at their bloody demise.

Hidimbi licked blood off her claws.

Hidimba smiled down at her. "Of course, they're nothing compared to you. Or to me. Oh, my dear little sister. I didn't know that you still had _that _in you." He gazed around at the gory remains of his bodyguards, splattered about the walls and the floor. "And you still pretend that you are nothing more than a peaceful scholar?"

"Come closer," Hidimbi said, beckoning with her dripping claws. "I'll show you how 'peaceful' I can be."

Hidimba frowned. "To be honest, I had expected you to find me sooner. Were you searching for Ghatotkacha before you started searching for me?"

"You sent my son into the Lower World," Hidimbi hissed.

"Of course I did. I promised him that I would."

"And then you imprisoned him."

"Of course I did. You know me so well, little sister. Unfortunately, your son doesn't."

"How did you do it?!" Hidimbi demanded, her eyes blazing. "How were you able to let him pass through a gate?!"

Hidimba merely kept smiling at her. "Tell me, sister. Where did you go searching for your son? Did you return to the Gudda system where I kept you imprisoned for so many years? Did you go running to that bitch Jara for help? Did you search for me in the Lower World before you thought to search for me here? I am an emperor, you fool, I do not make my whereabouts secret. However did you manage to take so long to find me?"

Hidimbi seethed. She had searched in the Gudda system, it had been one of the first places that she had gone to. Of course her brother wouldn't have been so obvious as to throw her son into the same prison where he had kept her for so many years. But she'd had to check anyway, just to be sure. Then she had gone searching through all of her brother's strongholds in the Lower World, but hadn't been able to find any trace of Ghatotkacha. Only when she had already spent months searching the Lower World, only when she had exhausted her every hint and lead, had she returned to her own world to risk confronting the mad emperor directly. If Hidimbi couldn't make him _tell_ her where Ghatotkacha was, she feared that she might never see her son again. "Tell me where Ghatotkacha is," Hidimbi growled, "before I rip your throat out."

"You once vowed that you would not be the one to kill me. You once swore before me and Ravana himself that you would never take another life."

"_I changed my mind."_

"Does that cunt Jara know that you're here right now, standing in front of me, attempting to steal her kill?"

Hidimbi grinned, flashing her fangs. "Does it matter?"

Hidimba regarded her smugly. "First you break your vows and slaughter my bodyguards. Next you smile and tell me that you're willingly betraying the woman who saved your life?" He chuckled. "How far you've fallen, you self-righteous bitch. I wonder what your son would think of you if he could see you now."

"_Where. Is. He?!_"

"Not here, if that's what you mean to be asking. I have already told you. Your son is in the Lower World, just as he always wanted to be. All I did was grant him his wish. I _do _care about dear little Ghatotkacha, you know. He is my nephew, after all."

"Liar! _Liar!!_" Hidimbi screamed at him, not caring about how hysterical she sounded. "You don't care about Ghatotkacha! You deceived him, you imprisoned him, you _violated him _by invading his dreams and planting lies in his head!"

"I never lied to him," Hidimba answered calmly. "I truly did hear his prayers calling out to the asuras. Any prayer that strong, any desire that powerful – I can feel all of the strongest wishes from all of the rakshasa within my empire. Admittedly, however, I was somewhat surprised at how easily I was able to connect to his mind. I was further surprised by the fact that you never once detected any trace of the connection that we had forged. You truly never once suspected that I had found your son and was able to enter his dreams? Ah, you should have listened to the warning that Ghatotkacha gave you. I've spent decades evolving my maya. You haven't."

"Oh, I have, brother. I have."

"Apparently not enough."

"I've been standing in front of you all this time, and you haven't yet struck me down where I stand, _because you can't._"

Hidimba's face grew dark. "Do not provoke me, Hidimbi."

"I came here to provoke you, you shitfaced cocksucker."

Hidimba tsked. "Listen to us. Still flinging childish insults at each other. Just like old times, isn't it? Next you're going to pull my hair and accuse me of stealing your dolly."

"_You stole my son!_"

"I _saved _him from you!" Hidimba countered. "Do you have any idea how deeply that poor boy wished to meet his father? How he burned for just one chance – just one chance! – to be able to see and touch and speak to his father? How many times he'd thought to himself, 'I would give anything, I would do anything, I would risk anything, for just once chance to pass through the gate'… No, of course you don't have any idea. He wouldn't _let _you have any idea, because he didn't want to hurt you. But I know. Oh, how I know. I've heard his thoughts, Hidimbi. I've seen his dreaming heart. I heard his mind calling out to the asuras, that same prayer, over and over again. 'I would give anything,' he prayed. 'I would do anything, I would risk anything.' He prayed over and over again. And I heard him. I am already the same as a god in this world, and so I heard him."

"_You are no god._ You are no asura!"

He smiled at her, pulling back his lips to reveal his sharp, sharp teeth. "I changed the rules of this universe. I created a gate that your son could pass through."

And suddenly Hidimbi saw his lie. She saw it as clear and as plain as day. She could see it in his eyes. "You didn't make that gate," she spat. "Or if you _did_, you're not the one who figured out _how. _Somebody's helping you, Hidimba. Somebody is providing you with power that you claim as your own. That's how you can hear the prayers of others, isn't it? That's how you were able to make that gate, isn't it?" She saw the look in his eyes and knew that she had spoken the truth. "Who is it, brother?" she pressed on, moving in for the kill. "Is it an asura? Are the gods meddling in our world again? Have you convinced yourself that you've become a god while merely becoming the puppet for a being far more powerful than you?"

Hidimba's self-assured grin did not falter, but his eyes grew hard and dangerous. "I am the rakshasa emperor," he said. "I have united hundreds of worlds in the true universe and six systems in the Lower World beneath my rule. I am a god. I am no puppet. If," he said carefully, "the glorious asuras have chosen to recognize my greatness and bless me with their gifts, then--"

"I _knew _it!"

"_SILENCE!"_

"You know that's really not going to work on me."

"Then I'll tear your throat out," Hidimba growled, extending his claws. "That will shut you up."

Hidimbi laughed. Oh, she'd gotten him now! She'd gotten him good. And now she knew the truth. Her brother wasn't nearly as powerful as he claimed to be. There was something else, likely an asura, pulling his strings. That was good thing, though. It meant that Hidimba was still defeatable. Bad in the sense that there was obviously an extremely powerful asura invested, for some reason, in Hidimba's affairs. Bad also because now Hidimba was angry at her, and when he got angry, he got homicidal. But still good, Hidimbi thought. She'd relish any victory that she could get, no matter how small. "If you want to strike me, then strike me," she goaded him. "If you can."

"Arrogant fool," Hidimba hissed. And then he lunged for her.

She was faster than him, and she knew that she was faster than him. She slid through space, easily dodged his claws, and laughed as her feet splashed in the blood left from her slaughter. "Hidimba, Hidimba, Hidimba," she chided him. She'd spent a lifetime training herself to avoid his angry claws. "Come on, _hit me_," she hissed, momentarily throwing her head back to expose her neck.

Hidimba, predictably, took the bait. With a roar, he lunged for her throat.

Perfect. His claws, his hands, his arms followed exactly the trajectory that Hidimbi had predicted. Fueling every bit of maya that she could into her hands, Hidimbi swung her arms in just in time to slide the molecules of her claws right through the flesh and bone of her brother's elbows.

Hidimba tried to lurch away from her at the last minute, but it was too late. Hidimbi torn his arms apart from the inside out, with one maya-fueled, atom-splicing swing of her claws.

Amazingly, he didn't scream. He seemed to let out a slow hiss through his teeth. He backed up a step, the gory ribbons that remained of his arms hanging loosely from his shoulders. "That hurt," he said.

"_Die already_," Hidimbi snarled. There was blood everywhere now. Why did it take so damn long for someone to bleed to death?!

Hidimba sighed wearily. As if he were still calm, as if he were still in control of the situation. As if he weren't losing buckets of his own blood through the gaping wounds in his arms every second. "Idiot sister," he said. "I am an emperor. Of course I had hoped to be able to finish the confrontation with you alone, but… Well." His breathing was getting ragged now, but somehow he was still standing. "I'm sorry, but I do have an army for a reason."

Apparently, he didn't need to have working fingers to press the call button on the comm he was wearing on his belt. Maya could do that well enough for him.

Doorways on three sides of his hall burst open at the same time, and the mad emperor's soldiers poured into the hall, stepping carelessly over the bodies of their comrades that Hidimbi had slaughtered. "_Your Majesty!" _a few shouted, rushing to Hidimba's side. The rest lowered their weapons – oh hells, those were projectile rifles – and fired at Hidimbi.

She had less than a second to react. _Phase, _she thought, shifting her molecules, letting the maya course through her body, praying to Ravana and to all of her gods that whatever ammunition was being fired toward her body would be able to pass through harmlessly.

Hidimbi felt the bullets sliding through her flesh, sliding through the empty spaces in her body. _Good, _she thought. _Now I have to get out of—_

Something slammed into her shoulder and exploded.

Hidimbi went down with a cry. "Hold your fire, hold your fire!" she heard someone shouting. The world spun. She smelled her own blood.

The mad emperor laughed. "Don't kill her yet," he said. "We've developed one type of ammunition that she can't phase through. I'd prefer to develop quite a few more. We need to keep her alive for the necessary testing."

Hidimbi tried to stand up, but she couldn't. She clawed at the bloody ground furiously, choking on her own rage. Now there was maya holding her down and she didn't know how to decode it. _Stupid, stupid! _her brain screamed at her. _You came charging in here on a suicide mission, you stupid idiot, what were you thinking?!_

Like she'd wanted to rip her brother's throat open, that was what she had been thinking. Oh, and trying to save her son. She had also been trying to save her son.

So much for either objective.

"Do not worry," Hidimba said, looming over her. Well, leaning on one of his bodyguards, and dripping blood all over the place, but still looming menacingly nevertheless. "I will do my utmost to ensure that my researchers treat you in the most humane manner possible. You understand, of course, don't you?" Blood dripped from between his teeth as he grinned down at her. "After all, you're a scientist."

* * *

TWO MONTHS, TWELVE DAYS, AND EIGHTEEN HOURS AGO

Hidimbi sensed the familiar presence beside her even before she fully awoke. Jara's claws were tenderly stroking her face when Hidimbi blearily opened her eyes.

"Oh, thank the gods," Jara said. "I was afraid you'd never wake up."

Hidimbi blinked at her, thickly. "Wh-Where…?"

"Jumpspace. Specifically, on board the _Pantha._"

Hidimbi groaned. "I'm dreaming this again."

Jara sighed. "I go to all of this trouble to rescue you, and think it's a dream. Typical. Ungrateful."

Hidimbi laughed weakly, then groaned. Her whole body was wracked with agonizing pain. She blinked and tried to turn her head, but couldn't. All she could see was white ceiling above her. Was she lying on her back? It felt like it, but she wasn't sure. Hidimbi suddenly wasn't sure which way was up or which was down anymore. "Ooooogh," Hidimbi groaned.

"Don't try to move," Jara said, quickly. "Your body mass has been scrambled and re-scrambled so many times that… Well. Er."

"How bad is it?" Hidimbi asked.

"You _look _fine, if that's what you're asking. Pretty as a princess."

"If I look fine, then why can't I move?"

"Because your body needs to heal."

Hidimbi closed her eyes. "Where's Ghatotkacha?"

"We don't know."

Hidimbi bit down on her lip to keep from screaming. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to stop the tears leaking from her eyes.

She felt Jara take her hand in hers. "We found you in the Kerala system. They had you locked up in a very public research facility. Hells, they weren't even making any effort to hide your location."

"My brother used me as bait for you," Hidimbi croaked.

"Of course he did, just like he's using Ghatotkacha as bait for you. Good work falling right into his trap, by the way."

"I was afraid that I would never find Ghatotkacha unless I could force him to tell me," Hidimbi said. "And then, uh…"

"You got really angry and tried to kill your brother anyway?"

"…Yes."

"As much as I would normally endorse any action that furthers my lifetime goal of seeing Hidimba's head being ripped off," Jara said, trying to sound flippant and doing a poor job of it, "I'm still rather furious about the fact that you broke your vow of non-violence, ran off without telling me where you were going, and then tried to face your brother alone, like you had some sort of suicide wish."

Hidimbi blinked the tears out of her eyes. "I'm an idiot. I know. I'm sorry."

"Well, you're also a mother," Jara said, somewhat sympathetically. "And mothers sometimes do crazy things for the sake of their children."

"How did you find me?" Hidimbi asked. The last thing that she remembered was falling down into a pool of blood in front of her brother's throne. After that, she remembered only a long, blessedly painless darkness.

Humane treatment indeed.

"I knew that you would do something as stupid as confronting Hidimba alone," Jara said, "and I was afraid that you would lose that confrontation. And then, well… As I said. Our enemies hardly bothered to keep your location a secret."

"Unlike wherever they're keeping Ghatotkacha."

"Yes, unlike that."

"So you rescued me?"

"Of course I did."

Hidimbi squeezed Jara's hand tightly. "You and who else…?"

"Oh, a small and sneaky army."

Hidimbi couldn't stand the forced casualness in Jara's voice. And suddenly Hidimbi realized just exactly what Jara's seemingly nonchalant attitude was covering for. "People died," Hidimbi said.

Jara was silent.

"People died while you were rescuing me," Hidimbi repeated.

"We're at war," Jara said, quietly. "And among our people, there are many who have read and loved your words. And among those, there were many who would gladly have risked their lives for your sake. Thankfully, not many had to."

Hidimbi felt a wave a self-loathing so intense that it made her stomach clench. "I'm so _stupid,_" she hissed. "I was so stupid, I went after Hidimba like an idiot, and then good people had to _die _to save me--"

"Don't you dare wallow in self-hatred about this," Jara suddenly snapped. "Don't you dare, Hidimbi. I saved you because I _need _you, and if you want to do right by my soldiers who gave their lives for you, then you'd better heal yourself up and get back to work fast." Jara let go of Hidimbi's hand. "I also saved you because I love you, you idiot, I love you like a sister and I'll always need you by my side. But not just as a friend. I also need you to fight for our cause, like you always have. Now more than ever."

"I understand," Hidimbi said quietly. "I'm not ever going to stop fighting for you, Jara. But Ghatotkacha--"

"We'll save him. I swear on my immortal soul, we'll find him and we'll save him. _We _will. Not you. You can't do this alone."

"But you're not going to prioritize the search for my son over the needs of the _Pantha, _are you."

"Of course I can't," Jara said. "I'm sorry."

Hidimbi closed her eyes again.

"I'll have need of your language skills, shortly," Jara said, suddenly all brusque and business-like.

"My what…?"

"Your language skills. You are the only person on board this ship who speaks more than a dozen languages from the Lower World. Lately we have been sorely lacking the skills of a decent translator."

"Wait. We're still… in the Lower World?" Hidimbi blinked, her mind whirling. "Why?"

"There's little left in the way of safe systems in our universe," Jara said. "And we've had more success using maya to replicate supplies in the Lower World, although still not enough success that we haven't had to resort to more old-fashioned methods of survival. Also," Jara went on, as if she were ticking off items on her claws, "your son is still in the Lower World, isn't he?"

Hidimbi felt her pain-addled brain struggling to keep up with Jara's words. "Wait wait wait. What do you mean by 'old-fashioned methods'? Why do you need a translator?"

Jara coughed. Then she said, "You should rest. I'll have Garimi give you a full debriefing later."

"Jara," Hidimbi said.

"Yes?"

"I need to ask your opinion about something."

"Of course."

Hidimbi licked her dry lips. "Why did Hidimba take Ghatotkacha, do you think?"

Jara clicked her tongue, a sign of her consternation. "I've thought about that question myself. And the truth is, I don't know. Maybe just to hurt you. Maybe because he just wanted to lock up an innocent boy, because he likes to play god. He has a sick mind, Hidimbi. You know that."

"I know," Hidimbi said. "But I'm worried. I think there's something else going on here. Hidimba is planning something. Gatu might be a part of that. Jara… Hidimba has an asura."

"He has a what?"

"An asura. An asura pulling his strings. Although I'm pretty sure he's convinced that it's the other way around."

Jara sucked in her breath. "Oh, wonderful. The last thing that we need are the gods meddling in our war. Especially if they decide to meddle on the wrong side."

Somehow, Hidimbi managed another weak laugh. She wasn't exactly sure why she was laughing, though. She and Jara were losing their war, a god himself had apparently seen fit to turn against them, Hidimbi's son was still locked away somewhere and still at the mercy of her mad brother, and Hidimbi couldn't even begin to justify her own laughter in the face of the fact that good rakshasas had just died in order to save her from her own stupidity.

Then Hidimbi wasn't laughing anymore. She was crying.

Jara leaned over and wiped the tears from Hidimbi's eyes. "Stop that," she said. "Rest. Go to sleep."

"Ghatotkacha!" Hidimbi sobbed. "Oh, Ghatotkacha!"

"We'll save him," Jara repeated, again. "Now go on, get that pitiful crying out of your system now. I need you to be strong for me. Later."

"All right," Hidimbi sniffled. Then she wept as Jara held her, wept and wept until she finally fell asleep.

* * *

NOW

The long-haired, somewhat scruffy-looking man pushed the shorter man aside and spoke frantically. "We have an injured party, we're sorry, please put down your weapons, we--"

"_Bhima?!_"

Hidimbi dropped her rifle, not because the captain of their captured vessel had told her to, but out of plain, simple shock.

Slowly, Bhima lifted his hand from the injured man kneeling at his feet. He was older, unmistakably older, with hard lines beginning to form on his previously innocent face, and a larger waist and belly than Hidimbi remembered. But it was him, all right. She would never forget his eyes.

He stared at her. "_Hidimbi?!_"

* * *

To be continued.


	27. Exile 03: Rescue

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Okay, guys. Here it is: the unfinished draft of Chapter 27. This represents the first ten pages of solid writing that I have finished. The rest is partially done in a combination of note/draft form. So please read this to the end if you wish. Thank you all for all of your support and feedback over the years, it's meant a lot to me! I hope that you enjoy this last little tidbit. And please please please don't kill me for ending with a cliffhanger…

* * *

MAHABHARATA STORY

by Nenena

* * *

EXILE 03: RESCUE

* * *

The mornings were the worst. When his brain was still sleep-addled and his stomach was still empty, he was at his weakest. And waking up at all was getting more and more difficult as the days passed.

Today was no different.

"Good morning," the attendant said, throwing open the curtains that covered the windows in his room, letting the red-tinted early morning sunlight slam him mercilessly in the face. He opened his eyes and blinked. She was pretty, of course – all of Hidimba's servants were pretty. And normally he would have appreciated the sight of such a pretty face. He did like pretty girls, after all. But at the moment, all that he cared about was the gnawing emptiness in his gut.

He sat up in his bed, slowly. If he sat up too quickly, he would get dizzy and nauseous. He always had to move slowly now.

"Are you hungry?" she asked him cheerfully.

He nodded, because no matter what the circumstances, he had been taught better than to lie.

"Here's your breakfast," she said, setting down a tray beside his bed. There were only two items on the tray: a glass of juice, and a bowl of meat stew.

She stood back and watching him silently, waiting to see what he would do.

He reached for the juice, of course. He drank it slowly, savoring its sweet taste, and the little bits of fruit pulp that tickled his tongue. It wasn't much, but it was sugar and a bit of nutrients, hence enough to at least keep him alive for the day.

The meat stew, he did not touch. Its rich, spicy smell only served to turn his stomach. He knew what the primary ingredient in the stew was. He would rather die than taste a single bite of the abomination.

He finished the juice, neatly placed his empty cup back on the tray, then lied back down in his bed and rolled over, his back to the servant. "Thank you," he mumbled into his pillow.

He could feel the pity in her eyes as she gazed at him. "Your Highness, you have to eat."

"Don't call me that."

"But--"

"I do not recognize my uncle's crown. So I am not a prince. This is simple." He buried his face in his pillow, trying to block out the smell of the stew. "I'm not a cannibal, either," he said into his pillow.

He closed his eyes, and listened to the sounds of her picking up the tray and leaving his room. He listened to the door slide shut behind her. He listened to the sounds of the many locks clicking into place.

He pulled his covers over his head, trying to block out the merciless sunlight. Of course, he could have just gotten out of bed, strode across the room, and closed the window curtains. But that would have required the expenditure of energy, and he had precious little of that left to waste.

He closed his eyes and willed himself to stop thinking about how sweaty and dirty he felt, or how nasty the taste in his mouth was. He knew that later on in the day, more of the emperor's servants would arrive, so that he might bathe himself and change his clothes beneath their close supervision. Until then, however, he could only sleep. He had to conserve his energy. He had to wait, and watch, and perhaps even pray for an opportunity to make his move.

It wasn't hard to fall back asleep, of course. His mind and his body were now in an almost permanent state of exhaustion.

* * *

II.

"Oh Gods, that wasn't supposed to happen." Ashwatthama's hands were clasped over his mouth in horror. "Oh Lord. Oh Lord. I didn't mean to."

Arjuna blinked at him. "Since when did you have three eyes and sixteen arms?"

"Wha--?" Ashwatthama seemed to look at himself for the first time. "Oh _hells._" Ashwatthama's many hands waved in frustration. "You must be _really _unconscious right now. Like really gone. What happened?!"

"Uh, where am I?"

"Deep within your lower brain but also in a higher plane of existence. It's complicated."

"But what happened?" Arjuna asked, throwing Ashwatthama's question back at him. Then he looked down at himself. "And why am I naked?"

"You triggered the curse. You – I mean, not specifically _you, _more like the plural all of you, or one of you at least - must have violated the rules of your exile. Now you have to start all over again." Ashwatthama smacked his forehead with one of his many hands. "What did you _do?! _How could you have broken the rules in less than a week?!"

"I don't know, but that ring of yours tried to set me on fire." Arjuna crossed his arms over his bare and – in this plane of existence, at least – unblemished chest. "And if we're having a mystical experience, and you get to have sixteen arms and three eyes, I think it's only fair that I should get at least some pants. Or something." He paused to look at Ashwatthama then, really look. The blue mark on Ashwatthama's forehead was gone, but in its place was a clear and bright eye, turned on its side. The third eye wasn't quite moving in tandem with Ashwatthama's other two eyes, either. It didn't blink when they blinked, but a few seconds before or later. Its gaze slid along on its own trajectory, not always following the focus of his other two eyes. It regarded Arjuna with the same sympathy and kindness that showed through the other two eyes, but something about it still made Arjuna want to shiver with disgust.

"I know. I'm sorry." Ashwatthama did look sorry – and genuinely mortified. "I guess I didn't realize… Mmm. How to put this. I guess I didn't realize how much juice I had charged that thing with," he said.

Arjuna looked again at Ashwatthama's sixteen arms and three eyes, and said, "Maybe you didn't realize how much juice youhad inside of you."

"…Maybe."

"Am I going to be all right?" Arjuna asked, touching his chest again.

"Yes. Gandiva will heal you. That's what devaweapons do – they protect their hosts. But we're lucky – and very, very blessed – that it was you wearing that ring, and not one of your brothers." Ashwatthama nodded to himself, solemnly. Then he turned his attention back to Arjuna. "Don't wear that ring again. Any of you."

"But it's the only thing I have that's from you," Arjuna said, sadly. Then he suddenly realized something. "Wait. Don't you have a matching ring back on Kuru?"

"Yes--"

"Who was wearing it?!" Arjuna asked, suddenly alarmed.

"Me."

"Are you all right?!"

"I'm fine." Ashwatthama laughed. "The, uh, the kickback came as a surprise to me too. But I'm fine now. My devaweapon healed me. Like I said."

"…You have a devaweapon?"

"Arjuna, what are you _wearing?_"

Arjuna looked down at himself, and realized, with a start, that he was wearing the gown that he remembered Draupadi having worn on their wedding day. "But I asked for _pants!" _he cried out at nobody in particular.

Ashwatthama was nearly doubled over with laughter, two of his arms clutching his stomach, while the rest of his hands waved around uselessly. "Arjuna, your subconscious is definitely the weirdest plane of existence I've ever experienced."

Arjuna crossed his silk-gloved hands over his silk-covered chest. "Thanks," he said. "I guess. So… what now?"

Ashwatthama's laugher abruptly ceased. He answered Arjuna solemnly, "We start over. As soon as you or I finish this, er, conversation. I guess you could call it that. This will be our last contact, unless you manage to set off the curse again. Anyway, as soon as I'm back in Kuru, I'll reset the clock. When you wake up, tell Yudhisthira to do the same." He peered at Arjuna carefully, all three of his eyes squinting with curiosity. "So… How _did _you break the rules, exactly?"

Arjuna shrugged. "I don't know. I was passed out. But I think – I _think_ – that we accidentally ran into someone that Bhima knows."

Ashwatthama frowned. "Aren't you supposed to be in jumpspace right now?"

"Yeah, but… We kicked out of jumpspace. We're kind of being robbed right now. Er, don't tell Mom. She'll just worry, you know."

* * *

III.

Arjuna opened his eyes right into a blinding flash of light.

"Damn!" His hands flew to his face, trying to shield himself. He heard laughter.

"I think you woke him up," Sahadeva's voice said.

"About time." That was Nakula's voice. "Hold still, Arjuna, I'm trying to take a picture."

Arjuna blinked, his mind waking up more slowly than his body. _What? What? _He sat up – easily. _The last thing I remember, I think I was dying—_

His hand flew to his bare chest, and he rested his fingers against the smooth, unblemished skin there. He felt no pain.

Another flash, momentarily blinding Arjuna again. He winced, blinking his eyes furiously to restore his sight.

"Nakula, stop that," Yudhisthira said.

"Are you kidding me? Look at his _face_. This is priceless."

Arjuna sat up quickly, felt a deep chill, and realized that he was naked from the waist up. Also, he realized that he was in a room with a lot of people. And they were all staring at him. His vision focused, blurred, then focused again. He was on the couch in the lounge, and surrounding him were his brothers and Draupadi and three strangers.

Three strangers. _Oh, no._

Arjuna's hand twitched, as he prepared to reach for his bow. But suddenly Yudhisthira was there, grasping his hand, stopping him. "It's all right, Arjuna. They're not going to hurt us."

"What happened?" Arjuna's eyes darted quickly around the room. "And can somebody please give me a shirt?"

Somebody did throw a shirt at him, then – Arjuna wasn't sure who. He started to dress himself, then winced as Nakula's camera flashed again. "_Nakula!"_

"Hey, I'm doing this for Ashwatthama. Seeing these holos will make him feel better. Even if we have to wait another thirteen years to give them to him."

Arjuna froze. "_Ashwatthama?! _Did you talk to--??"

"Arjuna, I'm sorry," Yudhisthira said, quickly cutting in before Arjuna could finish his question. "Not Ashwatthama, but Duryodhana contacted us. It was… a while ago. I actually inquired about the possibility of speaking to Ashwatthama, but Duryodhana claimed that he was indisposed."

"Oh, that's right," Arjuna said, quickly. "Ashwatthama just spoke to me anyway."

"…What?"

"It was kind of a mystical experience. Thing."

Yudhisthira patted Arjuna's shoulder, a bit condescendingly. "Arjuna, you had a fever," he said. "An extremely high fever."

"All right. Sure. I had a fever." Arjuna glanced around the room, found Krishna, and risked rolling his eyes. Krishna lifted his hand to his mouth to hide his chuckle.

"We started over." Yudhisthira went on, ignoring Arjuna's sarcasm and Krishna's obvious laugh. Yudhisthira pulled Arjuna's fingers apart, dropped his golden ring – no longer melted – into Arjuna's palm, and let Arjuna close his hand again. "We broke the rules. We had contact with somebody that one of us knew from before, and the curse did what it was supposed to do. Er, to you. But it was an accident, I believe. Ashwatthama would never intended for the curse to hurt you, it just…" He trailed off, the way that Yudhisthira was prone to do when Arjuna knew that he was choosing his words very, very carefully. Finally, Yudhisthira lowered his voice to a whisper. "Ashwatthama has powers greater than even he understands. And he made his curse more powerful than he intended. That is all."

"Did Ashwatthama get hurt?" Arjuna asked, also in a low voice.

"Duryodhana told us that he was unharmed, although I suspect--"

"Arjuna, you can't wear that ring anymore," Bhima's voice cut in, loudly.

Yudhisthira whirled toward Bhima, his face instantly going dark. Arjuna was as taken aback by this reaction as Bhima seemed to be. "Bhima," Yudhisthira hissed, "Don't you _dare _interrupt me I am talking to Arjuna right now and I am _going _to deal with you and your load of gillwash in a moment but right now you really need to _back off _and _shut up _and _wait your helldamned turn._"

Stunned silence greeted this outburst.

Yudhisthira took a deep breath, then turned back to Arjuna, having apparently gotten all of the invective out of his system. "Do you want us to call Kuru again?" Yudhisthira asked, gently. "We've already started our exile over, reset all of the clocks. It will hardly matter if we lose a few hours and do so over again."

Arjuna swallowed. "Why would I want you to call Kuru again?"

"Because we all had a chance to say our farewells again. It didn't feel right that you slept through that."

Arjuna thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. No. I can't say goodbye to any of them – not again." He tried to push Yudhisthira aside, to get a good look at the strangers that he still sensed in the room with him, but there was no way for him to do so politely. "So. Uh. Can somebody tell me what's going on?"

That was when Yudhisthira finally stepped aside, and Arjuna got a clear view of the three strangers in the room with him. Two women, and one man. They obviously weren't human. Too tall and too thin, with long flat faces, too-small noses, dark eyes and sharp visible fangs. Their hands and feet were too large. Speaking of which, their hands had claws. Long, sharp claws.

One of the women stepped forward. She did not bow to Arjuna, but she at least briefly lowered her head before she spoke. "Your Highness," she said. She spoke Arjuna's language with an accent. "We are relieved to see that you have recovered."

Arjuna stared at her. "Wait. Wait wait wait. Aren't you people still trying to kill us?"

"No," she answered smoothly. "We were unaware that you were Kuru royalty."

"And who would _you _be again?"

"We are--"

"Oh hells, this is taking too long," Nakula cut in, impatiently. "Here, Arjuna, let me info-dump on you. These are rakshasa, they were trying to rob us, but it turns out this one here actually had a bastard son with Bhima--"

"_Whaaaaat_?" Arjuna's jaw dropped.

"—And an evil rakshasa emperor kidnapped that kid," Nakula went on, breathlessly, "and Bhima's been freaking out because he didn't know that he had a son, and Yudhisthira's freaking out because he didn't know that Bhima had a son, oh yeah and also Bhima has super special awesome linguistic powers and can magically understand rakshasha language."

"_Whaaaaat_?" Arjuna repeated.

"See, now you're up to speed," Nakula said. "Next time, Arjuna, try not to sleep through the important parts, okay?"

* * *

IV.

He finished his bath for the day after the sun was already high in the sky. Freshly bathed and dressed, he was escorted back to his room – to his prison – and the doors were locked behind him again. He knew that he would not be permitted to leave his room for at least another day, if not two or three.

He lied down on top of his bed, and forced himself to relax. He needed to rest. He had to conserve what little energy he had left.

Eventually, his mind wandered into half-sleep. The hours passed in instants. Then, the sound of the locks unlocking, and his door sliding open. Soft footsteps approaching the bed. A cool, comforting hand on his forehead.

"Are you awake?" Mayasura asked.

"I am now." He sat up, slowly, and beckoned the asura to sit beside him on the bed. "My uncle let you come see me?"

"On the condition that I put in a good word on his behalf. Pretend that I am doing so now." Mayasura wrapped his arm around Ghatotkacha's shoulder, resting his hand on the boy's arm. It was not so much a gesture of affection as it was a gesture of diagnosis. "By Ravana. You're fading fast."

"I… I won't, you know. Eat. I won't eat what they feed me. _Never_."

"I know." Mayasura returned his hands to his lap, then a moment later, slipped a small bread roll into the boy's hands. "This is the most that I can do without risking your uncle detecting the use of my maya. Take it. Eat."

Ghatotkacha instinctively wanted to tear into the food immediately – he was already uncontrollably salivating, just from the scent of it, the feel of it in his hands. But still he held it for a moment, properly reverent. "Your maya is great," the boy breathed, in awe – as he always was – of the asura beside him. "To create something so real out of thin air, and within the constraints of the Lower World as well--"

"It is nothing," Mayasura said. And the boy knew that to him, it truly wasn't. As the devas were to humans, so were the asuras to the rakshasa – they were their gods. Asuras had created the rakshasa's world and the rakshasas themselves, eons ago. But they had also bestowed upon their creations the essence of their own powers. Which was why, to this day, rakshasas could still manipulate the power of maya – the very same power of the asuras themselves.

It was also why, god though he might have been, Mayasura was just as much a prisoner as Ghatotkacha was. "I am old," Mayasura had said to the boy, long ago, when their ordeal had first begun. "And I have been in the human world for a long time. Too long. I have little power in this realm. Your uncle has so much more… I am sorry."

At the time, the boy had insisted that no, he was the one who was sorry. Everything was his fault. Because of his foolishness, his stupidity, his selfishness… It was his fault that a being who was as a god to him was now trapped in the same prison that he was.

Ghatotkacha finished tearing apart and devouring his bread, taking time to lick every last crumb from his claws. Then he turned to the asura and said, "What will happen to you when I'm gone?"

Mayasura looked taken aback. "What do you mean, 'gone'?"

"I mean dead," Ghatotkacha said, bluntly. "Simple analysis: only three outcomes are possible at this point. One, I give up, renounce my parents, and join my uncle. Two, I don't ever give up, and my uncle lets me starve to death. Three, my mom and Jara rescue us before that happens. So, the first is _never _going to happen, the third, maybe, but it's really the second that seems the most likely outcome at this point." The boy regarded the asura evenly. "So. If I die. What will happen to you?"

Mayasura shook his head. "I am a god. I will not let you die. You are one of my favored children now."

"Thank you," Ghatotkacha said. Then he closed his eyes and leaned against the asura's shoulder, too weak to do anything else. But at least the asura's presence comforted him.

Some time passed. Ghatotkacha wasn't sure how much. But he sensed the heavy, dark presence of his uncle long before he heard the door of his room open and shut again. Ghatotkacha opened his eyes, looked up, and saw his uncle looming over him.

"Come," Ghatotkacha's uncle said. He sounded imperious. But then again, he always sounded imperious – he was an emperor, after all. "I have a guest who wishes to meet with you."

Mayasura said nothing, but squeezed Ghatotkacha's hand. The boy stared up at his uncle, silent and defiant.

"She is a priestess," the emperor said. "A _vegetarian. _We have offered food to entertain her, of course. You may partake if you wish."

Ghatotkacha looked down, unable to meet the emperor's eyes anymore. But he let go of Mayasura's hand and stood up, slowly.

"That's my boy," Hidimba said.

* * *

IV.

"She's your _what?_" Arjuna spluttered. "But she's trying to rob us!"

"Oh, no no no no no," the rakshasa woman said quickly, waving her claws for emphasis. "We're not going to take anything from you. Not anymore. Bhima is bound to me by my son's blood, and his family is my family."

"Oh, _thanks_," Nakula commented snidely. "You'd only threaten and steal from complete strangers, but not _family. _Oh, that's real honorable."

"Nakula," Yudhisthira said.

Nakula shut his mouth. Arjuna stared at Yudhisthira, surprised. He had never heard his oldest brother imbue a single utterance with so much anger before.

Yudhisthira, however, walked over toward the rakshasa woman, stood in front of her, and said, "You are thieves."

"Yes," she answered calmly, "but for good reason."

"Enlighten me."

"We have thousands of refugees on board the _Pantha. _Civilians and children. They need food. And we need energy resources to keep the _Pantha _moving. There is no safe planet for us to land the _Pantha _back in our universe. And there is no safe haven within the Lower World, either. We are rakshasa. In this universe, human-controlled planets will reject us, and rakshasa-controlled planets are all ruled by my brother. So we have been forced to resort to trapping and thievery to keep ourselves alive."

"But can't you just make food? Out of thin air?" Bhima asked her. "I saw you do that once."

"I was _cooking, _Bhima, not magicking food out of thin air. You just didn't see where I was storing the ingredients. I was keeping things in a separate space and I was cutting and grilling in a fast-forwarding time pocket. Got it? That's not magic."

Everyone stared at her.

"That… really sounds like magic to me," Bhima said.

"No, it's maya. And maya has rules. Strict rules. Especially here in the Lower World. We rakshasa are not omnipotent magicians, and we are every bit as much in danger of starving to death as--"

"—As we are," Draupadi said, cutting her off smoothly. "You most certainly chose the wrong ship to steal from. We have barely enough supplies to last us through the jump to the Gajapati system."

"Yes, yes, we're all hungry," Bhima cut in, impatiently. "But there's something more important that we have to deal with right now." He turned toward Hidimbi. "What the _hell _happened to my son?!"

* * *

V.

Ghatotkacha was dressed from head to toe in elegant finery. His newly-pierced ears were weighed down with gold and jewels. His uncle's most talented makeup artists had even touched up his face, in order to hide the dark circles beneath his eyes, and the hollowness of his cheekbones.

"You look so handsome," Hidimba said, his enormous hand resting on Ghatotkacha's too-thin shoulder. "You finally look like a real prince."

"I am not a prince," Ghatotkacha said.

"You are my flesh and blood. Therefore, you are royalty."

"I may be your flesh and blood, but _you _are no emperor," Ghatotkacha said.

Hidimba's claws dug into Ghatotkacha's shoulders. "One more remark like that, boy," he said, "and I will dismiss your ungrateful ass back to your room, without letting you join us at dinner."

Ghatotkacha pressed his lips shut. He sat obediently beside his uncle, waiting. They were not in his uncle's usual grand reception hall, but rather in a small room that Hidimba used only for the most intimate – and the most private – of meetings.

Finally, their guests arrived. The priestess came first, bowing down until her forehead touched the ground in front of Hidimba's feet. "Your Majesty," she said. "My Lord is pleased to have an audience with you." And then, a moment later, the Lord that the priestess had referred to stepped out of the shadows, looming over them all.

Hidimba, the rakshasa emperor, actually bowed all the way to the ground in front of the asura, closing his eyes and whispering humbly, "It is an honor, my Lord."

Ghatotkacha hesitated for a moment. His mother had taught him to worship noble asuras like Ravana and Mayasura, not wicked asuras like the one standing before him right now. Then Ghatotkacha dared to glance up at the asura's burning eyes, and he realized that if he did not bow and kiss the ground before the asura's feet this instant, he was about to be burned to ash.

Ghatotkacha threw himself down on the ground, trying to grovel with dignity, trying very hard not to piss himself out of sheer terror.

"My Lord is displeased by this child's disrespect," the priestess said, straightening from her bow. "Your Majesty, who is this boy?"

"This is my nephew, Ghatotkacha," the emperor said, also uprighting himself. "Please have mercy on him, my Lord. He was raised by his corrupt, abusive mother. I only recently was able to rescue him from her grasp. I have been trying my hardest, my Lord, but I cannot undo fourteen years of brainwashing overnight. Ghatotkacha still has much to learn. Please, have mercy on him."

Ghatotkacha swallowed his fear and slowly straightened out of his bow.

"I have come to you today, Hidimba," the asura said, "because the devas have once again begun to directly interfere in the affairs of the humans, thus it is only fair that we asura return to aid our rakshasa children as well." The asura closed his eyes for a moment, as if he pained. Then he opened his eyes and said, "The devas have already inserted two of their most powerful pawns into the Lower World." He gazed at Hidimba solemnly. "The Avatar has returned. And the Dharmaraj was born decades ago. Together, they will destroy us all."

Hidimba's eyes widened. "No," he breathed. "That's impossible. An Avatar? Here?! In the Lower World?"

"Yes."

"Who? _Where?!_"

....

* * *

AFTERWORD

Why yes, I did just cut off in the middle of a scene. You may throw tomatoes at me if you wish.

So with this, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to put this fic on hiatus. There are a lot of reasons behind this, and I spent a lot of time struggling with this decision, but here it is. The end, for now.

Anyway, here's where this is all going: The asura that Hidimba is speaking to now will become important later on, although we shouldn't know his name yet. As for what Hidimba is planning – as well as questions like how he managed to get Ghatotkacha into the Lower World, and how he managed to imprison Mayasura – that was all going to be revealed at the end of this chapter. In case you're thinking that I'm building up Hidimba as a major villain, however, that really isn't what I have in mind. Hidimba's days are numbered; the next chapter was supposed to be the Pandava's first major action!sequence during the Exile part, which of course would have climaxed with Hidimba's death and Ghatotkacha's reunion with his family.

If you're wondering who the major villain in the Exile chapters would have been, well, he was already hinted at a few chapters back: Jarasandha.

I want to thank everybody who's read this far, everybody who's given me feedback over the years, and especially my superheroic betas, Neeti and Steelehearts. From this point on, I _might_ be posting some unfinished scenes, short takes, and other material over at mahastory dot livejournal dot com. If you're interested, please check it out.

Thank you!


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